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Re: Mormonism in The New Germany, by Dale Clark

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Emergency Response Communication Protocol
by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Accessed: 7/18/18

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


There are two channels of communication in the event of an emergency.

The following diagram illustrates the two-way flow of communication. The solid line represents direct reporting responsibilities. The dotted lines represent lines of communication that are helpful during emergencies.

Image

The Mormon Hierarchy: How the LDS church is organized.
by Slate.com
Accessed: 7/18/18

Over its nearly two-century history, the LDS church has developed a complicated bureaucracy to oversee what is now a worldwide religion. While every active adult Mormon holds a calling in the church, only those at the very top serve in their positions on a full-time basis. And because only men can receive the LDS priesthood, the top of the hierarchy is entirely male. Read David Haglund's "Case of the Mormon Historian."

Image

Correction, Nov. 1, 2012: This chart originally depicted the general officers for the LDS primary as men. They're women.

Re: Mormonism in The New Germany, by Dale Clark

PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2018 9:52 pm
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Ephraim
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This article is about the Israelite tribal patriarch.

Image
Jacob blessing Ephraim and Manasseh.

Image
Ephraim, by Francesco Hayez

Ephraim /ˈiːfriːəm/;[1] (Hebrew: אֶפְרַיִם/אֶפְרָיִם, Standard Efráyim Tiberian ʾEp̄ráyim/ʾEp̄rāyim) was, according to the Book of Genesis, the second son of Joseph and Asenath. Asenath was an Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as wife, and the daughter of Potipherah, a priest of On.[2] Ephraim was born in Egypt before the arrival of the children of Israel from Canaan.[3]

The Book of Numbers lists three sons of Ephraim: Shuthelah, Beker, and Tahan.[4] However, 1 Chronicles 7 claims that he had at least eight sons, including Ezer and Elead, who were killed by local men who came to rob him of his cattle. After their deaths he had another son, Beriah.[5] He was the ancestor of Joshua, son of Nun, the leader of the Israelite tribes in the conquest of Canaan.[6]

According to the biblical narrative, Jeroboam, who became the first king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, was also from the house of Ephraim.[7]


Biblical criticism

The Book of Genesis related the name "Ephraim" to a Hebrew word for "being fruitful", referring to Joseph's ability to produce children, specifically while in Egypt (termed by the Torah as the land of his affliction).[8]

In the Biblical account, Joseph's other son is Manasseh, and Joseph himself is one of the two children of Rachel and Jacob, the other being Benjamin. Biblical scholars regard it as obvious, from their geographic overlap and their treatment in older passages, that originally Ephraim and Manasseh were considered one tribe – that of Joseph.[9] The Book of Revelation, however, accords only Ephraim the tribal name of Joseph. According to several biblical scholars, Benjamin was originally part of the suggested Ephraim-Manasseh single "Joseph" tribe, but the biblical account of Joseph as his father became lost.[10][11] A number of biblical scholars suspect that the distinction of the Joseph tribes (including Benjamin) is that they were the only Israelites which went to Egypt and returned, while the main Israelite tribes simply emerged as a subculture from the Canaanites and had remained in Canaan throughout.[11][12] According to this view, the story of Jacob's visit to Laban to obtain a wife originated as a metaphor for this migration, with the property and family which were gained from Laban representing the gains of the Joseph tribes by the time they returned from Egypt;[11] according to textual scholars, the Jahwist version of the Laban narrative only mentions the Joseph tribes, and Rachel, and does not mention the other tribal matriarchs whatsoever.[12][13]

In the Torah, the eventual precedence of the tribe of Ephraim is argued to derive from Jacob, blind and on his deathbed, blessing Ephraim before Manasseh.[8][14] The text describing this blessing features a hapax legomenon – the word שכל (sh-k-l) – which classical rabbinical literature has interpreted in esoteric manners;[15] some rabbinical sources connect the term with sekel, meaning mind/wisdom, and view it as indicating that Jacob was entirely aware of who he was actually blessing;[14] other rabbinical sources connect the term with shikkel, viewing it as signifying that Jacob was despoiling Manasseh in favour of Ephraim;[14] yet other rabbinical sources argue that it refers to the power of Jacob to instruct and guide the holy spirit.[14] In classical rabbinical sources, Ephraim is described as being modest and not selfish.[16] These rabbinical sources allege that it was on account of modesty and selflessness, and a prophetic vision of Joshua, that Jacob gave Ephraim precedence over Manasseh, the elder of the two;[14] in these sources Jacob is regarded as being sufficiently just that God upholds the blessing in his honour, and makes Ephraim the leading tribe.[14]

Due to this lack of identity some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation.[17]

See also

• Manasseh
• Tribe of Ephraim
• Tribe of Manasseh

References

1. "Ephraim". Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
2. Genesis 41:50–52
3. Genesis 48:5
4. Numbers 26:35
5. 1 Chronicles 7:20–23
6. 1 Chronicles 7:20–27
7. 1 Kings 11:26
8. Genesis 41:52
9. Jewish Encyclopedia, "Ephraim".
10. Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
11. Peake's commentary on the Bible
12. Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed
13. Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?
14. Genesis 48:1
15. Jewish Encyclopedia
16. Jewish Encyclopedia
17. Peake's commentary on the Bible

Re: Mormonism in The New Germany, by Dale Clark

PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2018 10:24 pm
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Rehoboam
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Accessed: 7/18/18

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Image
Rehoboam
King of Judah
Rehoboam. Fragment of Wall Painting from Basel Town Hall Council Chamber, by Hans Holbein the Younger
Rehoboam depicted on a fragment of the wall painting originally in the Great Council Chamber of Basel Town Hall, but now kept at the Kunstmuseum Basel.
Reign c. 931 - 913 BC
Predecessor Solomon
Successor Abijah
Born c. 972 BC
Died c. 913 BC
Father Solomon
Mother Naamah

Rehoboam was the fourth king of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible. He was a son of and the successor to Solomon, and a grandson of David. In the account of I Kings and II Chronicles, he was initially king of the United Monarchy of Israel, but after the ten northern tribes of Israel rebelled in 932/931 BC to form the independent Kingdom of Israel (Samaria), under the rule of Jeroboam, Rehoboam remained as king of only the Kingdom of Judah, or southern kingdom.

The name is pronounced /ˌriːəˈboʊ.əm/ and is also written as Hebrew: רְחַבְעָם‬, Modern Rəẖavʻam, Tiberian Reḥaḇʻām; Greek: Ροβοαμ, translit. Rovoam; Latin: Roboam.

Biblical background

According to the Jewish Encyclopaedia, "Solomon's wisdom and power were not sufficient to prevent the rebellion of several of his border cities. Damascus under Rezon secured its independence [from] Solomon; and Jeroboam, a superintendent of works, his ambition stirred by the words of the prophet Ahijah (1 Kings xi. 29-40), fled to Egypt. Thus before the death of Solomon the apparently unified kingdom of David began to disintegrate. With Damascus independent and a powerful man of Ephraim, the most prominent of the Ten Tribes, awaiting his opportunity, the future of Solomon's kingdom became dubious".[1]

According to 1 Kings 11:1-13, Solomon had broken the mandate of the Torah [2] by marrying foreign wives and being influenced by them, worshipping and building shrines to the Moabite and Ammonite gods.


So the Lord became angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned from the Lord God of Israel ... Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, “Because you have done this, and have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant. Nevertheless I will not do it in your days, for the sake of your father David; I will tear it out of the hand of your son.[3]


Rehoboam's mother, Naamah, was an Ammonitess, and thus one of the foreign wives whom Solomon married.[4] In the Revised Version she is referred to as "the Ammonitess". [5]

Biblical narrative

Conventional biblical chronology dates the start of Rehoboam's reign to the mid-10th century BC. His reign is described in 1 Kings 12 and 14:21-31 and in 2 Chronicles 10-12 in the Hebrew Bible. Rehoboam was 41 years old when he ascended the throne.[1]

Image
The United Kingdom of Solomon breaks up, with Jeroboam ruling over the Northern Kingdom of Israel (in green on the map).

The assembly for the coronation of Solomon's successor, Rehoboam, was called at Shechem, the one sacredly historic city within the territory of the Ten Tribes. Before the coronation took place the assembly requested certain reforms in the policy followed by Rehoboam's father, Solomon. The reforms requested would materially reduce the royal exchequer and hence its power to continue the magnificence of Solomon's court.[1] The older men counseled Rehoboam at least to speak to the people in a civil manner (it is not clear whether they counseled him to accept the demands). However, the new king sought the advice from the young men he had grown up with, who advised the king to show no weakness to the people, and to tax them even more, which Rehoboam did. He proclaimed to the people,

Whereas my father laid upon you a heavy yoke, so shall I add tenfold thereto. Whereas my father chastised (tortured) you with whips, so shall I chastise you with scorpions. For my littlest finger is thicker than my father's loins; and your backs, which bent like reeds at my father's touch, shall break like straws at my own touch.[6]


Although the ostensible reason was the heavy burden laid upon Israel because of Solomon's great outlay for buildings and for luxury of all kinds, the other reasons include the historical opposition between the north and the south. The two sections had acted independently until David, by his victories, succeeded in uniting all the tribes, though the Ephraimitic jealousy was ever ready to develop into open revolt. Religious considerations were also operative. The building of the Temple was a severe blow for the various sanctuaries scattered through the land, and the priests of the high places probably supported the revolt. Josephus (Ant., VIII., viii. 3) has the rebels exclaim: "We leave to Rehoboam the Temple his father built."[7]

Jeroboam and the people rebelled, with the ten northern tribes breaking away and forming a separate kingdom. The new breakaway kingdom continued to be called Kingdom of Israel, and was also known as Samaria, or Ephraim or the northern Kingdom. The realm Rehoboam was left with was called Kingdom of Judah.[6]


Rulers of Judah

Saul David Solomon Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Ahaziah Athaliah J(eh)oash Amaziah Uzziah/Azariah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon Josiah Jehoahaz Jehoiakim Jeconiah/Jehoiachin Zedekiah


During Rehoboam's 17-year reign,[8] he retained Jerusalem as Judah's capital but

Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins which they committed, more than all that their fathers had done. For they also built for themselves high places, and pillars, and Ashe′rim on every high hill and under every green tree; and there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.[9]


The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary attributes Rehoboam's "tendency to depart from the true religion" to his mother's influence.[10]

Civil war

Rehoboam went to war against the new Kingdom of Israel with a force of 180,000 soldiers. However, he was advised against fighting his brethren, and so returned to Jerusalem.[11] The narrative reports that Israel and Judah were in a state of war throughout his 17-year reign.[12]

Egyptian invasion

Image
The Bubastite Portal at Karnak, showing cartouches of Sheshonq I mentioning the invasion from the Egyptian perspective.

In the fifth year of Rehoboam's reign, Shishak, king of Egypt, brought a huge army and took many cities. According to Joshua, son of Nadav, the mention in 2 Chronicles 11, 6 sqq., that Rehoboam built fifteen fortified cities, indicates that the attack was not unexpected.[7] The account in Chronicles states that Shishaq marched with 1,200 chariots, 60,000 horsemen and troops who came with him from Egypt: Libyans, Sukkites, and Kushites.[13] Shishaq's armies captured all of the fortified towns leading to Jerusalem between Gezer and Gibeon. When they laid siege to Jerusalem, Rehoboam gave Shishaq all of the treasures out of the temple as a tribute. The Egyptian campaign cut off trade with south Arabia via Elath and the Negev that had been established during Solomon's reign.[14] Judah became a vassal state of Egypt.

Succession

Rehoboam had 18 wives and 60 concubines. They bore him 28 sons and 60 daughters. His wives included Mahalath, the daughter of Jerimoth the son of David, and Abihail, the daughter of Eliab the son of Jesse. His sons with Mahalath were Jeush, Shemariah, and Zaham. After Mahalath he married his cousin Maacah, daughter of Absalom, David's son. His sons with Maacah were Abijah, Attai, Ziza, and Shelomith.[15] The names of his other wives, sons and all his daughters are not given.

Rehoboam reigned for 17 years.[6][16] When he died he was buried beside his ancestors in Jerusalem. He was succeeded by his son Abijah.[17]

Biblical chronology

Using the information in Kings and Chronicles, Edwin Thiele has calculated the date for the division of the kingdom is 931–930 BC. Thiele noticed that for the first seven kings of Israel (ignoring Zimri's inconsequential seven-day reign), the synchronisms to Judean kings fell progressively behind by one year for each king. Thiele saw this as evidence that the northern kingdom was measuring the years by a non-accession system (first partial year of reign was counted as year one), whereas the southern kingdom was using the accession method (it was counted as year zero). Once this was understood, the various reign lengths and cross-synchronisms for these kings was worked out, and the sum of reigns for both kingdoms produced 931/930 BC for the division of the kingdom when working backwards from the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. According to newer chronologists such as Gershon Galil and Kenneth Kitchen, however, the values are 931 BC for the beginning of the coregency and 915/914 BC for Rehoboam's death.

One episode which the Bible places during the reign of Rehoboam, and which is confirmed by the records from the Bubastite Portal in Karnak and other archaeological find (without the specific mention of the name Rehoboam), is the Egyptian invasion of Judea by the Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq I, who is identified by many with the biblical King Shishak. One of the most difficult issues in identifying Shishak with Shoshenq I is the biblical statement that "King Shishak of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. He seized the treasures of the Lord's temple and the royal palace" (1 Kings 14:25-26), making this Shoshenq's biggest prize, whereas the Bubastite Portal lists do not include Jerusalem or any city from central Judea among the surviving names in the list of Shoshenq's conquests.[18]

References

1. Jewish Encyclopedia, Rehoboam
2. Deuteronomy 7:3
3. 1 Kings 11:1-13
4. 1 Kings 14:21
5. 1 Kings 14:21, English Revised Version
6. Geikie, Cunningham. Hours with the Bible: From Rehoboam to Hezekiah, John B. Alden, New York, 1887
7. Kittle, R., "Rehoboam", The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. IX: Petri - Reuchlin, Samuel Macauley Jackson (ed.), Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1953
8. 1 Kings 14:21
9. 1 Kings 14:22-24
10. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary on 1 Kings 14, accessed 22 October 2017
11. 1 Kings 12:22-24, 2 Chronicles 11:2-4
12. 2 Chronicles 12:15
13. ""Relief and Stelae of Pharaoh Shoshenq I: Rehoboam's Tribute, c. 925 BCE", The center for Online Judaic Studies".
14. Aharoni, Yohanan. The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography, Chap. IV, Westminster John Knox Press, Philadelphis, Pennsylvania, 1979
15. 2 Chronicles 12:18-21
16. 1 Kings 14:21
17. 2 Chronicles 12:16
18. de Mieroop, Marc Van (2007). A History of Ancient Egypt. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. p. 400. ISBN 9781405160711.

Re: Mormonism in The New Germany, by Dale Clark

PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2018 11:15 pm
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Ahijah the Shilonite
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Image
Gerard Hoet, Ahijah's prophecy to Jeroboam, 1728.

Ahijah the Shilonite (Hebrew: אחיה השילוני, Aḥiya [1] ('brother of Yah'[2]) Hashiloni), was a Levite prophet of Shiloh in the days of Solomon, as mentioned in the Hebrew Bible's 1 Kings. Ahijah foretold to Jeroboam that he would become king (1 Kings 11:29).[3]

The Hebrew Bible records two of his prophecies. In 1 Kings 11:31-39, he announced the separation of the Northern ten tribes from Solomon's united kingdom, forming the Northern Kingdom. In 1 Kings 14:6-16, Ahijah's prophecy, delivered to Jeroboam's wife, foretold the death of the king's son, the destruction of Jeroboam's dynasty, and the fall and captivity of Israel "beyond the River", a stock expression for the land east of the Euphrates.[4]

According to 2 Chronicles, Ahijah also authored a book, described as the Prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, which contained information about Solomon's reign.[5] This text, however, has not survived and is one of the lost texts mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In 1 Kings 11:41 it is referred to as the "Book of the Acts of Solomon".

Rabbinic tradition credits Ahijah with having lived a very long life,[6] linking his life-span with that of antediluvian patriarchs such as Methuselah and Noah.

References

1. According to "Ahijah", Jewish Encyclopedia, the name also appears in the expanded form אחיהו, Aḥiyahu.
2. See Gesenius, who interprets the name as "friend of Jehovah," taking the literal expression 'brother' as metaphorical for friendship. [1]
3. "Ahijah", Jewish Encyclopedia
4. Holman Bible Dictionary, "Beyond the River"
5. 2 Chronicles 9:29
6. Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 12lb

Re: Mormonism in The New Germany, by Dale Clark

PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2018 11:26 pm
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Asherah pole
Wikipedia
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"Asheroth" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Ashteroth.

An Asherah pole is a sacred tree or pole that stood near Canaanite religious locations to honor the Ugaritic mother-goddess Asherah, consort of El.[1] The relation of the literary references to an asherah and archaeological finds of Judaean pillar-figurines has engendered a literature of debate.[2]

The asherim were also cult objects related to the worship of the fertility goddess Asherah, the consort of either Ba'al or, as inscriptions from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom attest, Yahweh,[3] and thus objects of contention among competing cults. In translations that render the Hebrew asherim into English as "Asherah poles," the insertion of "pole" begs the question by setting up unwarranted expectations for such a wooden object: "we are never told exactly what it was", observes John Day.[4] Though there was certainly a movement against goddess-worship at the Jerusalem Temple in the time of King Josiah, (2 Chronicles 34:3) it did not long survive his reign, as the following four kings "did what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh" (2 Kings 23:32, 37; 24:9, 19). Further exhortations came from Jeremiah. The traditional interpretation of the Biblical text is that the Israelites imported pagan elements such as the Asherah poles from the surrounding Canaanites. In light of archeological finds, however, modern scholars now theorize that the Israelite folk religion was Canaanite in its inception and always polytheistic, and it was the prophets and priests who denounced the Asherah poles who were the innovators;[5] such theories inspire ongoing debate.[6]

References from the Hebrew Bible

Asherim are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, the Books of Kings, the second Book of Chronicles, and the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah. The term often appears as merely אשרה, (Asherah) referred to as "groves" in the King James Version, which follows the Septuagint rendering as ἄλσος, pl. ἄλση, and the Vulgate lucus,[7] and "poles" in the New Revised Standard Version; no word that may be translated as "poles" appears in the text. Scholars have indicated, however, that the plural use of the term (English "Asherahs", translating Hebrew Asherim or Asherot) provides ample evidence that reference is being made to objects of worship rather than a transcendent figure.[8]

The Hebrew Bible suggests that the poles were made of wood. In the sixth chapter of the Book of Judges, God is recorded as instructing the Israelite judge Gideon to cut down an Asherah pole that was next to an altar to Baal. The wood was to be used for a burnt offering.

Deuteronomy 16:21 states that YHWH (rendered as "the Lord") hated Asherim whether rendered as poles: "Do not set up any [wooden] Asherah [pole][9] beside the altar you build to the Lord your God" or as living trees: "You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God which you shall make".[10] That Asherahs were not always living trees is shown in 1 Kings 14:23: "their asherim, beside every luxuriant tree".[11] However, the record indicates that the Jewish people often departed from this ideal. For example, King Manasseh placed an Asherah pole in the Holy Temple (2 Kings 21:7). King Josiah's reforms in the late 7th century BC included the destruction of many Asherah poles (2 Kings 23:14).

Exodus 34:13 states: "Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherim [Asherah poles]."

Image


Asherah poles in biblical archaeology

Some biblical archaeologists have suggested that until the 6th century BC the Israelite peoples had household shrines, or at least figurines, of Asherah,[12] which are strikingly common in the archaeological remains.[13]

Raphael Patai identified the pillar figurines with Asherah[14] in The Hebrew Goddess.

See also

• Baal
• Pole worship

References

1. Sarah Iles Johnston, ed. Religions of the Ancient World, (Belnap Press, Harvard) 2004, p. 418; the book-length scholarly treatment is W.L. Reed, The Asherah in the Old Testament (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press) 1949; the connection of the pillar figurines with Asherah was made by Raphael Patai in The Hebrew Goddess(1967)
2. Summarized and sharply criticized in Raz Kletter's The Judean Pillar-Figurines and the Archaeology of Asherah (Oxford: Tempus Reparatum), 1996; Kletter gives a catalogue of material remains.
3. W.G. Dever, "Asherah, Consort of Yahweh? New Evidence from Kuntillet ʿAjrûd" Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research,1984; D.N. Freedman, "Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah", The Biblical Archaeologist, 1987; Morton Smith, "God Male and Female in the Old Testament: Yahweh and his Asherah" Theological Studies, 1987; J.M. Hadley "The Khirbet el-Qom Inscription", Vetus Testamentum, 1987
4. Day 1986, pp. 401–04.
5. William G. Dever, Did God have a wife?: Archaeology and folk religion in ancient Israel, 2005, esp. pp
6. Shmuel Ahituv (2006), Did God have a wife?, Biblical Archaeology Review, Book Review
7. Day 1986, p. 401.
8. van der Toorn, Becking, van der Horst (1999), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in The Bible, Second Extensively Revised Edition, pp. 99-105, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ISBN 0-8028-2491-9
9. Wooden and pole are translators' interpolations in the text, which makes no such characterisation of Asherah.
10. Various translations of Deuteronomy 16.21 compared.
11. Day 1986, p. 402 – "Which would be odd if the Asherim were themselves trees", noting that there is general agreement that the asherim were man-made objects
12. Neill, James (2008). The origins and role of same-sex relations in human societies. McFarland. p. 96. ISBN 978-0-7864-3513-5. In fact, the worship of Baal and Asherah persisted among the Israelites for over seven centuries, from the period after the conquest and settlement of Canaan — which most biblical scholars place at around 1400 B.C., to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the exile of the Israelites in Babylon in the 6th century B.C.
13. Finkelstein, Israel, and Silberman, Neil Asher, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, ISBN 0-684-86912-8
14. Thompson, Thomas L.; Jayyusi, Salma Khadra, eds. (2003). Jerusalem in ancient history and tradition: Conference in Jordan on 12 - 14 October 2001 (Volume 381 of Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series, Illustrated). London: T & T Clark. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-567-08360-9.

Sources

• Day, John (September 1986). "Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Literature". Journal of biblical Literature. 105 (3): 385–408.

Re: Mormonism in The New Germany, by Dale Clark

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Sacred prostitution
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Sacred prostitution, temple prostitution, cult prostitution,[1] and religious prostitution are general terms for a sexual rite consisting of sexual intercourse or other sexual activity performed in the context of religious worship, perhaps as a form of fertility rite or divine marriage (hieros gamos). Some scholars prefer the term sacred sex to sacred prostitution in cases where payment for services was not involved.

Ancient Near East

Image
Inanna/Ishtar depicted wearing the ceremonial headdress of the high priestess

Ancient Near Eastern societies along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers featured many shrines and temples or houses of heaven dedicated to various deities. The 5th-century BC historian Herodotus's account and some other testimony from the Hellenistic Period and Late Antiquity suggest that ancient societies encouraged the practice of sacred sexual rites not only in Babylonia and Cyprus, but throughout the Near East.

According to Herodotus, the rites performed at these temples included sexual intercourse, or what scholars later called sacred sexual rites:

The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger at least once in her life. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, "I invite you in the name of Mylitta". It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her. So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfil the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four. There is a custom like this in some parts of Cyprus.[2]


The British anthropologist James Frazer accumulated citations to prove this in a chapter of his magnum opus The Golden Bough (1890–1915),[3] and this has served as a starting point for several generations of scholars. Frazer and Henriques distinguished two major forms of sacred sexual rites: temporary rite of unwed girls (with variants such as dowry-sexual rite, or as public defloration of a bride), and lifelong sexual rite.[4] However, Frazer took his sources mostly from authors of Late Antiquity (i.e. 150–500 AD), not from the Classical or Hellenistic periods.[5] This raises questions as to whether the phenomenon of temple sexual rites can be generalized to the whole of the ancient world, as earlier scholars typically did.

The research of Daniel Arnaud, Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, Julia Assante, Stephanie Budin[6] and others has cast the whole tradition of scholarship that defined the concept of sacred prostitution into doubt. Budin regards the concept of sacred prostitution as a myth—arguing that the practices described in the sources simply never existed. A more nuanced view, espoused by Pirenne-Delforge, suggests that ritual sex did exist in the Near East, but not in the Greek or Roman worlds in classical or Hellenistic times.[6]

Sacred marriage

The practice of sacred prostitution has not been substantiated in any Ancient Near Eastern cultures, despite many popular descriptions of the habit.[7] Through the twentieth century, scholars generally believed that a form of sacred marriage rite or hieros gamos was staged between the king of a Sumerian city-state and the High Priestess of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare, but no certain evidence has survived to prove that sexual intercourse was included. Along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers there was a temple of Eanna, meaning house of heaven[8] dedicated to Inanna in the Eanna District of Uruk.[9]

While there may well have been some religious prostitution in the temples of Inanna/Ishtar, Assante suggests the concept of the 'sacred marriage' (hieros gamos) has been misunderstood. It was previously believed to have been a custom whereby the king coupled with the high priestess to represent the union of Dumuzid with Inanna (later called Ishtar).[10] It is much more likely that these unions never occurred but were embellishments to the image of the king; hymns which praise Middle Eastern kings for coupling with the goddess Ishtar often speak of him as running 320 kilometres, offering sacrifices, feasting with the sun-god Utu, and receiving a royal crown from An, all in a single day. One scholar comments: "No one, to the best of my knowledge, has been so wooden-minded to propose that human actors played the role of Utu and An at the banquet."[11] Not all authors are convinced, however.[10]

Other modern historians argue that the temple did house priestesses of the goddess, but there is no evidence that they performed any kind of sexual services in any cult.[12][13][14][15]

Code of Hammurabi

In Hammurabi's code of laws, the rights and good name of female sacred sexual priestesses were protected. The same legislation that protected married women from slander applied to them and their children. They could inherit property from their fathers, collect income from land worked by their brothers, and dispose of property. These rights have been described as extraordinary, taking into account the role of women at the time.[16]

Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible uses two different words for prostitute, zonah (זונה)‎[17] and kedeshah (or qedesha) (קדשה)‎.[17] The word zonah simply meant an ordinary prostitute or loose woman.[17] But the word kedeshah literally means consecrated (feminine form), from the Semitic root q-d-sh (קדש)‎ meaning holy or set apart.[17] In spite of the cultic significance of a kedeshah to a follower of the Canaanite religion, the Hebrew Bible makes it clear that cultic prostitution had no place in Israelite or Judahite religion. Thus the Hebrew version of Deuteronomy 23:17-18 tells followers:

None of the daughters of Israel shall be a kedeshah, nor shall any of the sons of Israel be a kadesh.

You shall not bring the hire of a prostitute (zonah) or the wages of a dog (kelev) into the house of the Lord your God to pay a vow, for both of these are an abomination to the Lord your God.


Stephen O. Murray writes that biblical passages ban qdeshim and link them with gods and "forms of worship detested by orthodox followers of Yahweh".[18] Celia Brewer Sinclair has written that "the ethical demands of the covenant preclude worshiping Yahweh in licentious sexual rites (sacred sexual rites )".[19] Male priests who engaged in same-sex sacred prostitution were called kadesh or qadesh (literally: male holy one); the word evolved semantically in ancient Hebrew to take on a similar meaning to sodomite.[20] The Hebrew word kelev (dog) in the next line may also signify a male dancer or prostitute.[21] Some scholars see the injunctions against foreign worship, including male sacred prostitution, as possibly the original cause of what would later become Judaism's condemnation of sexual contact between men.[20] However, there are multiple examples of condemnation and instructions against male same-sex intercourse (e.g., Sodom and Gomorrah, Leviticus 20:13) in the Torah that predate Judaism.

In the Book of Ezekiel, Oholah and Oholibah appear as the allegorical brides of God who represent Samaria and Jerusalem. They became prostitutes in Egypt, engaging in prostitution from their youth. Ezekiel condemns both as guilty of religious and political alliance with heathen nations.[22]

Sumer

According to the noted Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer, kings in the ancient Near Eastern region of Sumer established their legitimacy by taking part in a ritual sexual act in the temple of the fertility goddess Ishtar every year on the tenth day of the New Year festival Akitu.[23]

Hittites

The Hittites practiced sacred prostitution as part of a cult of deities, including the worship of a mated pair of deities, a bull god and a lion goddess, while in later days it was the mother-goddess who became prominent, representing fertility, and (in Phoenicia) the goddess who presided over human birth.[24]

Ancient Greece and Hellenistic World

Ancient Greece


In ancient Greece, sacred prostitution was known in the city of Corinth where the temple of Aphrodite employed a significant number of female servants, hetairai, during classical antiquity.[25]

The Greek term hierodoulos or hierodule has sometimes been taken to mean sacred holy woman, but it is more likely to refer to a former slave freed from slavery in order to be dedicated to a god.[6]

Hellenistic world

In the Greek-influenced and colonized world, "sacred prostitution" was known in Cyprus (Greek-settled since 1100 BC), Sicily (Hellenized since 750 BC), in the Kingdom of Pontus (8th century BC) and in Cappadocia (c. 330 BC hellenized).

Ancient Rome and late antiquity

Ancient Rome

Late antiquity


The Roman emperor Constantine closed down a number of temples to Venus or similar deities in the 4th century AD, as the Christian church historian Eusebius proudly noted.[26] Eusebius also claimed that the Phoenician cities of Aphaca and Heliopolis (Baalbek) continued to practise temple prostitution until the emperor Constantine put an end to the rite in the 4th century AD.[26]

Asia

India


In Southern India and the eastern Indian state of Odisha, devadasi is the practice of hierodulic prostitution, with similar customary forms such as basavi,[27] and involves dedicating pre-pubescent and young adolescent girls from villages in a ritual marriage to a deity or a temple, who then work in the temple and function as spiritual guides, dancers, and prostitutes servicing male devotees in the temple. Human Rights Watch reports claim that devadasis are forced into this service and, at least in some cases, to practice prostitution for upper-caste members.[28] Many scholars maintain that the devadasi system is not described in the holy scriptures of Hinduism as the scriptures do not refer to any form of sacred prostitution or temple girls.[29] Whether the devadasi girls engaged in sexual services is debated, however, as temple visitors touching or speaking to the girls was considered an offence.[29]

Various state governments in India enacted laws to ban this practice both prior to India's independence and more recently. They include Bombay Devdasi Act, 1934, Devdasi (Prevention of dedication) Madras Act, 1947, Karnataka Devdasi (Prohibition of dedication) Act, 1982, and Andhra Pradesh Devdasi (Prohibition of dedication) Act, 1988.[30] However, the tradition continues in certain regions of India, particularly the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.[31]

Islam

Sexual slavery as concubinage in Islamic sexual jurisprudence is permitted in Islam which was not considered prostitution, and was very common during the Arab slave trade throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period, when women and girls from the Caucasus, Africa, Central Asia and Europe were captured and served as concubines in the harems of the Arab World.[32] Ibn Battuta tells us several times that he was given or purchased female slaves.[33]

Concubinage in Islam is permitted. "Concubine" (surriyya) refers to the female slave (jāriya), whether Muslim or non-Muslim, with whom her master engages in sexual intercourse. The word "surriyya" is not mentioned in the Qur'an. However, the expression "Ma malakat aymanukum" (that which your right hands own), which occurs fifteen times in the sacred book, refers to slaves and therefore, though not necessarily, to concubines. Concubinage was a pre-Islamic custom that was allowed to be practiced under Islam with Jews and non-Muslim people to marry concubine after teaching her and instructing her well and then giving them freedom.[34] Rationale given for recognition of concubinage in Islam is that "it satisfied the sexual desire of the female slaves and thereby prevented the spread of immorality in the Muslim community."[35] Most schools restrict concubinage to a relationship where the female slave is required to be monogamous to her master[36] (though the master's monogamy to her is not required), but according to Sikainga, "in reality, however, female slaves in many Muslim societies were prey for [male] members of their owners' household, their [owner's male] neighbors, and their [owner's male] guests."[35]

According to Shia Muslims, Muhammad sanctioned Nikah mut‘ah (fixed-term marriage, called muta'a in Iraq and sigheh in Iran) which has instead been used as a legitimizing cover for sex workers, in a culture where prostitution is otherwise forbidden.[37] Some Western writers have argued that mut'ah approximates prostitution.[38] and Nikah misyar[39] Julie Parshall writes that mut'ah is legalised prostitution which has been sanctioned by the Twelver Shia authorities. She quotes the Oxford encyclopedia of modern Islamic world to differentiate between marriage (nikah) and Mut'ah, and states that while nikah is for procreation, mut'ah is just for sexual gratification.[40] According to Zeyno Baran, this kind of temporary marriage provides Shi'ite men with a religiously sanctioned equivalent to prostitution.[41] According to Elena Andreeva's observation published in 2007, Russian travellers to Iran consider mut'ah to be "legalized profligacy" which is indistinguishable from prostitution.[42] Religious supporters of mut'ah argue that temporary marriage is different from prostitution for a couple of reasons, including the necessity of iddah in case the couple have sexual intercourse. It means that if a woman marries a man in this way and has sex, she has to wait for a number of months before marrying again and therefore, a woman cannot marry more than 3 or 4 times in a year.[43][44][45][46][47][48]

Mesoamerica and South America

The Maya maintained several phallic religious cults, possibly involving homosexual temple prostitution.[49][50] The Aztec god Xochipili (taken from both Toltec and Maya cultures) was both the patron of homosexuals and homosexual prostitutes.[50][51][52][53] The Inca sometimes dedicated young boys as temple prostitutes. The boys were dressed in girl's clothing, and chiefs and head men would have ritual sexual intercourse with them during religious ceremonies and on holy days.[54][55]

Xochiquetzal was worshiped as goddess of sexual power, patroness of prostitutes and artisans involved in the manufacture of luxury items.[56]

The conquistadores were horrified by the wide-spread acceptance of homosexuality, ephebophilia, pederasty, and pederosis among Mesoamerican and South American peoples, and used torture, burning at the stake, mass beheadings, and other means to stamp it out both as a religious practice and social custom.[50]

Recent Western occurrences

In the 1970s and early 1980s, some religious cults practiced sacred prostitution as an instrument to recruit new converts. Among them was the alleged cult Children of God, also known as The Family, who called this practice "Flirty Fishing". They later abolished the practice due to the growing A.I.D.S. epidemic.[57]

In Ventura County, California, Wilbur and Mary Ellen Tracy established their own temple, the Church Of The Most High Goddess, in the wake of what they described as a divine revelation. Sexual acts played a fundamental role in the church's sacred rites, which were performed by Mary Ellen Tracy herself in her assumed role of High Priestess.[58] Local newspaper articles about the Neopagan church quickly got the attention of local law enforcement officials, and in April 1989, the Tracys' house was searched and the couple arrested on charges of pimping, pandering and prostitution. They were subsequently convicted in a trial in state court and sentenced to jail terms: Wilbur Tracy for 180 days plus a $1,000.00 fine; Mary Ellen Tracy for 90 days plus mandatory screening for STDs.[59][60]

See also

• Deuki
• Sex worker
• Sex magic
• Devadasi
• Primitive promiscuity
• Hetaera
• Hijra (South Asia)
• Sexuality in ancient Rome
• List of fertility deities
• List of love and lust deities

References

1. Schulz, Matthias (2010-03-26). "Sex in the Service of Aphrodite: Did Prostitution Really Exist in the Temples of Antiquity?". Spiegel Online. Retrieved 2016-01-01.
2. Herodotus, The Histories 1.199, tr A.D. Godley (1920)
3. J.G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, abridged edition (1922), Chapter 31: Adonis in Cyprus; see also the more extensive treatment in the 3rd edition of The Golden Bough, volumes 5 and 6 (published 1914). Frazer's argument and citations are reproduced in slightly clearer fashion by Fernando Henriques, Prostitution and Society: a study (3 vols., London : MacGibbon & Kee, 1962–1968), vol. I, ch. 1.
4. Fernando Henriques, Prostitution and Society: a study (3 vols., London : MacGibbon & Kee, 1962–1968), vol. I, ch. 1.
5. Herodotus and Strabo are the only sources mentioned by Frazer that were active prior to the 2nd century AD; his other sources include Athenaeus, pseudo-Lucian, Aelian, and the Christian church historians Sozomen and Socrates of Constantinople.
6. Stephanie Budin, The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2009); more briefly the case that there was no sacred prostitution in Greco-Roman Ephesus by S.M. Baugh (1999) http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/ ... _JETS.pdf; see also the book review by Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, April 28, 2009.
7. James Frazer (1922), The Golden Bough, 3e, Chapter 31: Adonis in Cyprus
8. é-an-na = sanctuary ('house' + 'Heaven'[='An'] + genitive) [John Halloran's Sumerian Lexicon v. 3.0 – see link below]
9. Modern-day Warka, Biblical Erech.
10. John Day, "Does the Old Testament Refer to Sacred Prostitution and Did it Actually Exist in Ancient Israel?", in Biblical and Near Eastern Essays: Studies in Honour of Kevin J. Cathcart, eds. Carmel McCarthy & John F Healey (Continuum International Publishing, 2004), 2–21.
11. Sweet, R. "A New Look at the 'Sacred Marriage' in Ancient Mesopotamia", in E. Robbins and S. Sandahl, eds., Corolla Torontonensis. Studies in Honour of Ronald Morton Smith (Toronto, 1994) 85–104.
12. Budin, Stephanie Lynn, The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity
13. Assante, Julia 1998. "The kar.kid/[kh]arimtu, Prostitute or Single Woman? A Reconsideration of the Evidence", Ugarit-Forschungen; 30:5–96
14. Assante, Julia 2003. "From Whores to Hierodules: the Historiographic Invention of Mesopotamian Female Sex Professionals", pp. 13–47 in Ancient Art and Its Historiography, edited A. A. Donahue and Mark D. Fullerton. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University
15. Yamauchi, Edwin M. 1973. "Cultic Prostitution: a Case Study in Cultural Diffusion", pp. 213–222 in Orient and Occident: Essays Presented to Cyrus H. Gordon, edited H. Hoffner. Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany: Kevelaer
16. The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine By Nancy Qualls-Corbett
17. Associated with the corresponding verb zanah."Genesis 1:1 (KJV)". Blue Letter Bible. Retrieved 5 April 2018. incorporating Strong's concordance (1890) and Gesenius's Lexicon (1857). Also transliterated qĕdeshah, qedeshah, qědēšā,qedashah, kadeshah, kadesha, qedesha, kdesha. A modern liturgical pronunciation would be k'deysha.
18. Murray, Stephen O. (2002). Homosexualities. University of Chicago Press. p. 295.
19. Sinclair, Mashal; Brewer, Celia (1989). A Guide Through the Old Testament. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 71.
20. "A History of Homophobia: 1 The Ancient Hebrews". Retrieved 18 May 2015.
21. Lexicon results for kelev (Strong's H3611), incorporating Strong's Concordance(1890) and Gesenius's Lexicon (1857).
22. "NETBible: Oholibah". Retrieved 18 May 2015.
23. S. N. Kramer, The Sacred Marriage Rite: Aspects of Faith, Myth and Ritual in Ancient Sumer.
24. Nagendra Kr Singh, Divine Prostitution page 6, (1997)
25. Strabo. "Geographica". VIII.6.20.
26. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 3.55 and 3.58
27. "What is child hierodulic servitude?". Anti-Slavery Society. Archived from the original on 2 January 2016. Retrieved 5 April 2018.
28. Human Rights Watch. Caste: Asia's Hidden Apartheid
29. http://www.samarthbharat.com/files/devadasihistory.pdf
30. United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Thirty-seventh session: 15 January – 2 February 2007
31. "`Project Combat' launched to eradicate `Devadasi' system". The Hindu. 2006-01-30. Retrieved 2007-01-31.
32. "BBC - Religions - Islam: Slavery in Islam". Retrieved 11 December 2016.
33. Insights into the concept of Slavery Archived 2009-11-22 at the Wayback Machine.. San Francisco Unified School District.
34. "Al-Adab Al-Mufrad / Book-9 / Hadith-48". quranx.com. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
35. Sikainga, Ahmad A. (1996). Slaves Into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan. University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-77694-2. p.22
36. Bloom, Jonathan; Blair, Sheila (2002). Islam: A Thousand Years of Faith and Power. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09422-1. p.48
37. İlkkaracan, Pınar (2008). Deconstructing sexuality in the Middle East: challenges and discourses. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 36. ISBN 0-7546-7235-2.
38. Meri, Josef W.; Bacharach, Jere L. (1 January 2006). Medieval Islamic Civilization: L-Z, index. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415966924.
39. Pohl, Florian (1 September 2010). Muslim World: Modern Muslim Societies. Marshall Cavendish. pp. 52–53. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
40. Parshall, Philip L.; Parshall, Julie (1 April 2003). Lifting the Veil: The World of Muslim Women. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 9780830856961.
41. Baran, Zeyno (21 July 2011). Citizen Islam: The Future of Muslim Integration in the West. A&C Black. ISBN 9781441112484.
42. Andreeva, Elena (2007). Russia and Iran in the great game: travelogues and Orientalism. Routledge studies in Middle Eastern history. 8. Psychology Press. pp. 162–163. ISBN 0415771536. "Most of the travelers describe the Shi'i institution of temporary marriage (sigheh) as 'legalized profligacy' and hardly distinguish between temporary marriage and prostitution."
43. Temporary Marriage in Islam Part 6: Similarities and Differences of Mut’a and Regular Marriage | A Shi'ite Encyclopedia | Books on Islam and Muslims | Al-Islam.org. Permanent archived link.
44. "Iddah Of Mutah". ShiaChat.com.
45. "Marriage » Mut'ah (temporary marriage) - Islamic Laws - The Official Website of the Office of His Eminence Al-Sayyid Ali Al-Husseini Al-Sistani". http://www.sistani.org.
46. "The Rules in Matrimony and Marriage". Al-Islam.org.
47. "How is Mutah different from prostitution (from a non-Muslim point of view)?". islam.stackexchange.com.
48. "Marriage". english.bayynat.org.lb.
49. Thompson, John Eric Sidney. The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization. 2d ed. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973. ISBN 0-8061-0301-9
50. Greenberg, David. The Construction of Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. ISBN 0-226-30628-3
51. Diaz del Castillo, Bernal. The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Library Reprints, 2008. ISBN 1-4227-8345-6; Trexler, Richard C. Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas. Paperback ed. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8014-8482-0; Keen, Benjamin. The Aztec Image in Western Thought. Paperback ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8135-1572-6; Idell, Albert. The Bernal Diaz Chronicles. New York: Doubleday, 1956.
52. Mendelssohn, Kurt. Riddle of the Pyramids. Paperback ed. New York: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 1986. ISBN 0-500-27388-X; Estrada, Gabriel S. "An Aztec Two-Spirit Cosmology: Re-sounding Nahuatl Masculinities, Elders, Femininities, and Youth." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 24:2 & 3 (2003).
53. Taylor, Clark L. "Legends, Syncretism, and Continuing Echoes of Homosexuality from Pre-Columbian and Colonial Mexico." In Male Homosexuality in Central and South America. Paperback ed. Stephen O. Murray, ed. San Francisco: Instituto Obregon, 1987. ISBN 0-942777-58-1
54. Guerra, Francisco. The Pre-Columbian Mind. Burlington, Mass.: Academic Press, Inc., 1971. ISBN 0-12-841050-7
55. Flornoy, Bertrand. The World of the Incas. Trans. by Winifred Bradford. New York: Vanguard Press, 1956; Scott, George Ryley. Phallic Worship. London, Luxor, 1966; Brundage, Burr Cartwright. Lords of Cuzco: A History and Description. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967; Murra, Victor. The Economic Organization of the Inka State. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1980. ISBN 0-89232-118-0.
56. Clendinnen (1991, p.163); Miller & Taube (1993, p.190); Smith (2003, p.203)
57. Williams, Miriam (1998). Heaven's Harlots. New York: William Morrow/ Harper Collins. p. 320. ISBN 978-0-688-17012-7.
58. "Church uses Sex to save Sinners!". Weekly World News. 6 June 1989. p. 17. Retrieved 18 May 2015.
59. "Religion Based On Sex Gets A Judicial Review". New York Times. 2 May 1990. Retrieved 24 November 2015.
60. "Star-News - Google News Archive Search". Retrieved 18 May 2015.

Further reading

• Henriques, Fernando, Prostitution and Society, 3 vols. (London : MacGibbon & Kee, 1962-1968), vol. I: "Primitive, Classical and Oriental".
• Cleugh, James Oriental Orgies: an account of some erotic practices among non-Christians. London: Anthony Blond, 1968

External links

• Stuckey, H. Johanna. "Sacred Prostitutes". MatriFocus. 2005 vol 5-1.
• Deuteronomy 23:18-19, and a discussion
• Jenin Younes (2008), Sacred Prostitution in Ancient Israel

Re: Mormonism in The New Germany, by Dale Clark

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Image
Jeroboam
ירבעם
King of Israel
Illustration of Jeroboam setting up two golden calves, Bible Historiale, 1372.

Reign c. 931 to 910 BC
Predecessor Rehoboam
Successor Nadab, his son
Born unknown
United Kingdom of Israel
Died c. 910 BC
Tirzah, Northern Kingdom of Israel
Spouse Ano (named only in the Septuagint)
House New House, Tribe of Ephraim
Father Nebat
Mother Zeruah

Image
Jeroboam sacrificing to his idol, oil on canvas by Claes Corneliszoon Moeyaert, 1641

Jeroboam I /ˌdʒɛrəˈboʊ.əm/ (Hebrew: יָרָבְעָם‬ Yārāḇə‘ām; Greek: Ἱεροβοάμ, translit. Ierovoám) was the first king of the northern Kingdom of Israel after the revolt of the ten northern Israelite tribes against Rehoboam that put an end to the United Monarchy.

Jeroboam reigned for 22 years.
William F. Albright has dated his reign from 922 to 901 BC, while Edwin R. Thiele offers the dates 931 to 910 BC.[1]

Etymology

The name Jeroboam יָרָבְעָם‬ is commonly held to have been derived from riyb רִיב‬ and ʿam עַם‬, signifying "the people contend" or "he pleads the people's cause". It is alternatively translated to mean "his people are many" or "he increases the people" (from רבב‬ rbb, meaning "to increase"), or even "he that opposes the people". In the Septuagint he is called Hieroboam (Ἱεροβοάμ).[2]

Background

Jeroboam was the son of Nebat (Douay-Rheims: Nabat), a member of the Tribe of Ephraim of Zereda. His mother,[3] named Zeruah (צרוע "leprous") was a widow. (1 Kings 11:26) He had at least two sons, Abijah [4] and Nadab, who succeeded him on the throne.

While still a young man, King Solomon made him superintendent over his tribesmen in the building of the fortress Millo in Jerusalem and of other public works, and he naturally became conversant with the widespread discontent caused by the extravagances which marked the reign of Solomon.[5]

Influenced by the words of the prophet Ahijah (1 Kings 11:29–39), he began to form conspiracies with the view of becoming king of the ten northern tribes; but these were discovered, and he fled to Egypt, where he remained under the protection of pharaoh Shishak until the death of Solomon. After this event he returned and participated in a delegation sent to ask the new king Rehoboam to reduce taxes.[6] After Rehoboam rejected their petition, ten of the tribes withdrew their allegiance to the house of David and proclaimed Jeroboam their king, forming the northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria). Initially, only the tribes of Judah, Simeon and Benjamin remained to form the new kingdom of Judah, loyal to Rehoboam.[7]

The most salient point at which this study differs from virtually everything published on the subject of Mormonism so far is the emphasis placed here on the political and later geopolitical function of Joseph Smith's political agitation against Henry Clay in 1844, and then of Brigham Young's empire of Deseret, as gambits of British imperial policy against the United States. The Mormons were certainly promoted by John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, and the intelligence division of the British East India Company in London.

There has never been any secret about the cordial support extended to the Confederate States of America by the British Foreign Office. There is now a growing awareness that Confederate secessionism was mightily stimulated by the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite Freemasons, who were ultimately a satellite of London. It is time to recognize that Mormon theocracy and Mormon secessionism were just as desirable from the British point of view as the creation of the Confederate state....

Brigham Young's machinations cannot be understood apart from British imperial strategy before and during the American Civil War...

Mormon leadership passed into the hands of Brigham Young, who actually implemented some of Joseph Smith's most daring plans. Following a brief period of regroupment after the slaying of the Prophet, Brigham Young led the Mormons in 1847 to Salt Lake City. At this time, Salt Lake City and the entire Great Basin were part of Mexico. Brigham Young set to work creating an independent country hostile to the United States, and generally oriented in favor of the British Empire. This was the Mormon state of Deseret, a name drawn from the Hebrew word for the honeybee. Deseret was admirably situated to cut the eastern United States off from California, the Oregon Territory, and the Pacific Ocean. Here once again all power -- religious, political, military, economic, and judicial -- was concentrated in the hands of the Mormon supremo, now Brigham Young. Brigham Young was the de facto commander of the military forces. For many years he was governor of the territory, having been appointed by Millard Fillmore. When he was ousted as governor by Buchanan, he fell back on his control of the judiciary, including the judges and juries in the territorial probate courts, which had arrogated to themselves original jurisdiction in all state and federal cases.

When Salt Lake City and the rest of the Great Basin were ceded by Mexico to the United States of America as a result of the treaty ending the Mexican War, and when Americans began crossing the Great Basin on their way to California in the Gold Rush after 1848, Mormon hostility to the United States only increased.

Brigham Young's personal ties to the British Empire included a sojourn of a number of years in England, where he had been sent by Joseph Smith to recruit new members for the church. The fact that this activity was not suppressed by the British government provides an unmistakable indication of British sponsorship, at least in part, for the Mormon project. Mormonism collected defenders, including Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and Charles Dickens -- the first two with British intelligence pedigrees. Converts from England, Scotland, and Wales probably constituted the majority of the Mormon Church in the middle of the 19th century....

During the Civil War of 1861-1865, Brigham Young confirmed himself as a hardened traitor to the United States, pouring scorn and invective on Abraham Lincoln and his government, and preparing another bid for secession, especially in case of British intervention in the wake of some landmark Union defeat. President Lincoln, raved Brigham Young, was a "cursed scoundrel." [36] At other times, the Mormon boss stated that Lincoln was "wicked," [37] "subject to the influence of a wicked spirit," [38] and "fully adrift on the current of radical fanaticism." [39]...

But Joseph Smith's cosmic ambitions were not limited to the spiritual realm alone. They also aimed unmistakably at a totalitarian and dictatorial power over the affairs of this world. If modem Wahabites proclaim that all Moslem governments are illegitimate because they do not represent the caliphate prescribed by Mohammed, Joseph Smith and his lieutenants similarly argued that all the governments of the earth are intolerable because they do not represent the Kingdom of God. Joseph Smith proclaimed that he would soon provide a military solution to this problem, and thus set the stage for the Apocalypse. In this sense, a religion like Mormonism can be seen as a universal destabilization of all the existing systems of politics and government. Coming as it did at the zenith of the British Empire, it is not hard to imagine who would benefit from the spread of such a doctrine, and this issue will be addressed....

The Prophet Joseph Smith was born in eastern Vermont, in the valley of the White River. During the I790s there appeared in this state, not far from the Massachusetts border, a utopian and collectivist community of about 40 persons known as the Dorrilites, named after their founder, who, appropriately enough, was a retired redcoat officer from the British Army. Was this Dorril a stay-behind operation of the British Empire? The importance of the Dorrilites is that they offer a substantial repertoire of those organizational and doctrinal features which will later characterize Mormonism. Like the Mormons, the Dorrilites had communist property relations, but no political democracy, since the Britisher Dorril demanded total submission to his divinely inspired commands. He imposed a rigorous regime of vegetarianism, banning even leather shoes. The Dorrilites were accused by local ministers not just of doctrinal deviations, but also of holding bacchanalian orgies....

In June 1835, the British oligarchy established what looks like their first significant contact with the Mormons, with the arrival of Rev. John Hewitt. Hewitt had been dispatched for contact talks by a congregation of charismatic Pentecostalist Christians in Barnsley, England. Their interest had been attracted by a Mormon publication, and the English faithful hailed them as "kindred spirits." The Barnsley group was affiliated with the Catholic Apostolic Church, which enjoyed the support of Foreign Secretary George Canning, and the interest of the famous Victorian man of letters Thomas Carlyle, who was also an admirer of the Mormons. Hewitt's visit raised the question of affiliations and alliances with other religious movements in the 1830s." (Bushman, pp. 270-71) Subsequently, Joseph Smith would order two of his top lieutenants to Britain in 1837, followed by the entire top leadership in 1839-40. From that time on, Great Britain -- and not the United States -- would become the principal source of new converts for the Mormon Saints. The Mormons would become increasingly British in composition and mentality....

On another occasion, the Prophet was visited by the significant British agent, Edwin de Leon, who went on to become a mainstay of the Confederate foreign service. De Leon asked Joseph about the attractive females he observed going in and out of the Prophet's dwelling. Joseph said that these were his nieces. De Leon expressed some skepticism. Then, "There was a slight twinkle in the prophetic eye, as he poked me in the ribs with his forefinger, and rebuked me, exclaiming, 'Oh, the carnal mind, the carnal mind!' and I thought it discreet not to press the subject." [63] (Hirshson, pp. 44-45) On another occasion, the Prophet confessed to an associate, "Whenever I see a pretty woman, I have to pray for grace."...

One of Bennett's most important charges against Joseph Smith was that the Mormons intended to create a secessionist Confederation of Western states and territories, over which Joseph Smith would rule as the King. This puts the Mormon Prophet squarely in the tradition of the arch-traitor Aaron Burr, who had attempted to create his own breakaway Western Empire between 1804 and 1806, taking advantage of the weakness of the Thomas Jefferson administration and of the collusion of Burr's cousin Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury. This conspiracy had been sponsored by the British, who would also have been the beneficiaries of Joseph Smith's evolving Western plans. Bennett alleged that the Nauvoo Legion had already acquired 30 cannon and large quantities of small arms at the expense of the state of Illinois. (Brodie, p. 314) With 30 guns mounted in fortified emplacements on the bluffs at Nauvoo, the Mormons would have been able to block traffic on the Mississippi River in something of the way that the Confederates were later to do using the fortress of Vicksburg.

The Nauvoo Legion, said Bennett, had sworn the Danites oath and would obey the commands of the Prophet without question, no matter how illegal they were. Bennett also spoke of a super-secret inner elite within the Danites. These were the Destroying Angels, representing a kind of palace guard with the intelligence function of spying on the adversaries of the Prophet and murdering them, preferably at midnight, while wearing white robes and a red sash. (Brodie, p. 314-15)...

From the profile of Joseph Smith's campaign, which partially mimicked the Henry Clay Whig program of the National Bank and the gradual phasing out of slavery, it is possible to discern that the Mormon Prophet's candidacy would in practice have siphoned votes away from the Whigs, to give victory to the Democrat Polk. In the event, Polk's victory depended on another minor party, the abolitionist Liberty Party of James G. Birney. Slave owners and British imperialists united in their support for Polk, who would strengthen the Slave Power by the admission of Texas into the Union. Henry Clay's 1844 presidential bid may be considered as the last best chance for the United States (apart from the later Zachary Taylor presidency) to reestablish a national bank, restart the process of vigorous economic development which had been interrupted under Jackson and Van Buren, diminish the importance of slavery on the national scene, and thus avoid civil war. From this point of view, Joseph Smith's attempt to construct a countergang against Henry Clay emerges as profoundly dangerous for US national survival....

The British religious and theological establishment deliberately fomented a worldwide wave of religious irrationalism, taking the form of charismatic prophets and prophecies, speaking in tongues, false Messiahs, predictions of the end of the world, and frenetic enthusiasm. The goal in every case was to weaken the social order and spread mass hysteria. In China, Iran, and the United States, these movements became large and powerful enough to pose serious risks to internal stability and even to national survival. British religious currents like the Darbyites, the British Israelites, and the charismatics were all deployed as part of this effort....

In 1832, the state of South Carolina, prefiguring its later role as the official cradle of secessionism, announced its intention to nullify the new federal tariff legislation, which free trade ideologues called the "tariff of abominations." For a while it seemed as if secession and possible civil war might result. After a time, the South Carolina fire eaters decided to back down, and a reprieve of almost three decades on the question of civil war was thus achieved. Joseph Smith responded immediately to these events with his famous Civil War Prophecy of December 25, 1832. Here Joseph Smith forecast:

Verily, thus saith the Lord, concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will eventually terminate in the death and misery of many souls; and the time will come that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place. For behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States, and the Southern States will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britain, as it is called, and they shall also call upon other nations, in order to defend themselves against other nations; and then war shall be poured out upon all nations.

And it shall come to pass, after many days, slaves shall rise up against their masters, who shall be marshaled and disciplined for war. ... and thus, with the sword and by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine, and plague, and earthquake, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations .... [90]


The scenario thus developed by the Mormon Prophet substantially corresponds to the strategic intentions of the British Empire in regard to the United States, as displayed during 1861-65. These were to foment a rebellion of the slave states against the Union, and then to arrange an intervention by Britain and possibly France and Spain against the United States. In the event, Anglo-French intervention was prevented by a number of factors, notably the strong support given to the United States by the Russian Empire, the world power which London and Paris had good reason to fear. This 1832 revelation prefigures in many essential details the White Horse Prophecy of almost a dozen years later, in which the Mormon White Horse and the British Red Horse unite against the American Pale Horse and defeat it....

The month of June, 1835 marks the first demonstrable official contact between the Mormon leadership around Joseph Smith and a representative of the British theological-intelligence establishment. This contact was established through a visit to Kirtland, Ohio by the British Reverend John Hewitt. Reverend Hewitt had been sent by a charismatic congregation in Barnsley, England. Reverend Hewitt, who came from the Rotherham Independent Seminary, explained that the Barnsley congregation had seen a Mormon-controlled newspaper which had been brought back to England by a merchant who had been in New York City. Based on this newspaper, the Barnsley group had concluded that the Mormons had common ground with them. The Barnsley letter announced that "The Lord hath seen our joy and gladness to hear that He was raising up a people for Himself in that part of the New World, as well as here." (Bushman, pp. 270-71)

Hewitt proposed an alliance between the Mormons and the Barnsley group. He was able to assure Joseph Smith that many members of his congregation were people of means who could be of great assistance. There was also the distinct possibility that many of the English charismatics would want to come to America. The letter from the Barnsley group promised the Mormon Saints that "many will follow, should he approve of the country, etc., who will help the cause, because the Lord hath favored them with this world's goods." This was a timely offer, since the Mormons were at this time in dire financial straits. The letter also indicated that the Barnsley group was not likely to be deterred by mob attacks and harassment: "we understand that persecution had been great among you, or would be, but we were commanded not to fear, for He would be with us."

Pro-Mormon historians argue that this visit did not lead to further contacts, but there is no doubt that the first official Mormon delegation departed for England less than two years after this first contact was made. That was then followed in 1839 by the transfer of the entire Quorum of the Twelve to England for an intensive program of publishing, fundraising, and recruiting work which made British subjects, be they English, Scottish, or Welsh, the majority of the world Mormon movement. Within a few years after this fateful 1835 encounter, Mormonism had been thoroughly Anglicized, and its dominant temper became decidedly Anglophile.

The curiosity of the Barnsley group about the Mormons had been whetted by parallels in the ecclesiastical apparatus of these two sects. Between 1832 and 1835, charismatic leaders in London, having allegedly received revelations, created a group of twelve apostles, just like the Mormons and at more or less the same time. The selection of the English Twelve Apostles had been completed on July 14, 1835. The Barnsley group also called themselves Saints.

The Bamsley group continued the charismatic-irrational religious revival which had been set into motion through the efforts of a famous London preacher of Scottish background, Edward Irving. Irving had preferred the name "congregations gathered under apostles," but eventually this denomination called itself the Catholic Apostolic Church. Edward Irving was a former Scottish Presbyterian who had been expelled by the Kirk in 1822, and who had thereupon set up shop in the Caledonian Chapel in Hatton Garden, London.

Irving quickly attracted the sympathetic attention of the top levels of the ruling British oligarchy. The chapel had seats for about 500 persons, but, for a time at least, Irving was able to draw two to three times that number. The neighborhood streets were blocked by luxurious carriages: "it has been said that, on one occasion at least, the queue of carriages waiting to return the worshipers to their homes was four miles in length." [91]

Edward Irving was a close friend of the famous British reactionary essayist and man of letters Thomas Carlyle, with whom he had been associated back in Scotland. Carlyle, like James Mill, John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin, and other celebrated British literary figures of the Victorian age, was part of the ideological and cultural control apparatus of the empire. Irving attracted his following in part due to praise he had received during a parliamentary debate in the House of Commons from George Canning, the British Foreign Secretary and future Prime Minister. After Canning had called attention to Irving's church, other members of Parliament, wealthy lawyers and bankers, and clergyman from the English and Scottish established churches flocked to hear the new charismatic message. (Bushman, pp. 271-72)

Support from Canning meant support from the very heart of the British imperial apparatus. George Canning was one of the most powerful British politicians of the Napoleonic era. An associate of William Pitt the younger, he became Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1796 to 1799. He then served on the India board between 1799 and 1800. He was in Parliament between 180 I and 1804, when he became Treasurer of the Navy for two years. He was Foreign Secretary between 1807 and 1809, during which time he was associated with the cowardly British sneak attack on the Danish fleet in Copenhagen harbor. After five years in Parliament and two years as British Ambassador to Portugal, he became president of the India Board between 1816 and 1820. After two more years in Parliament, Canning became Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons, posts which he held from 1822 to 1827. These were the greatest years of Edward Irving's success in London. In 1827, Canning became prime minister, with Lord Lansdowne, the son of the leading oligarch William Petty, the Earl of Shelburne, as a member of his cabinet, but he died suddenly on August 8, 1827.

Along with his rival Castlereagh, Pitt, and the Duke of Wellington, Canning was by any measure one of the leading British oligarchs of the age. His promotion of Edward Irving can be thought of as serving two goals. The first was to increase the degree of religious irrationality in the British ruling class, so as to facilitate the final push for total world domination over the coming few decades. The second aspect was that Canning could see the vast potential of preachers inspired by Irving's brand of charismatic irrationalism for destabilizing and disrupting nations around the world, which otherwise might offer resistance to the triumphant march of the British Empire. The British, in short, promoted Edward Irving for the same reasons that the Venetians promoted Savonarola against Florence and Martin Luther against Germany: to create chaos and conflict, and to weaken strategic rivals to the mother country.

Irving's congregation "was particularly notable for the proportion of professional people that contained lawyers, physicians, actors, artists, diplomats, and men from similar walks of life. They and their fine ladies were drawn in large numbers to his ministry .... England's literary circles were especially well represented." [92]

Frequenters of Irving's Sunday services included famous people like the anti-slavery activist Zachary Macaulay, an associate of Bishop Wilberforce. There was the poet and essayist Charles Lamb, and the philosopher and painter William Hazlitt. In another pew might sit journalist Thomas de Quincy, the author of the sensational Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821). The romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who also dabbled with narcotics, was a friend and admirer of Irving. Another worshiper was the future historian and Whig politician, Thomas Babington Macaulay. William Wordsworth, the future poet laureate, was also a visitor, as was Sir Walter Scott, the leading practitioner of the romantic historical novel and a prime asset of British cultural-political operations, as for example in the American South. The young future Prime Minister William Gladstone attended, and laughed to see the headmaster of Eton College in the crush. A wealthy couple, Mr. and Mrs. Basil Montagu, tried to help Irving find a wife. He was originally interested in Jane Welsh, but she married Thomas Carlyle, and then moved on to Mazzini. [93] British intelligence was a small world at the top.

The Barnsley congregation may be thought of as a kind of contact bureau for the Caledonian Chapel and later Catholic Apostolic Church mother ships, a bureau tasked with keeping in touch with charismatic and apocalyptic movements across Britain and across the Atlantic. The followers of Edward Irving allowed various church members to act as prophets and speak in tongues during the worship services as the spirit moved them. But, Joseph Smith reserved the gift of prophecy to himself alone, and this practice was imitated by his successors such as Brigham Young. Despite these differences, large numbers of Catholic Apostolics transferred to the Mormon Saints....

Another way to see the support given to the Mormons by the elites of the British aristocracy is to examine the attitudes towards them exhibited by some of the leading Victorian men of letters. Given the inherent prudery and bigotry of the Victorian age, one would normally expect a sect of uncouth polygamists in the wilds of North America to be an object of execration among British literary elitists. But, surprisingly enough, the Mormons had powerful supporters, doubtless for anti-American geopolitical reasons. Some of these writers were notoriously linked to the British intelligence establishment, sometimes through the British East India Company. Writers seeking acceptance after about 1870 by a lower middle-class market, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, could portray the Mormons in a negative light, as in A Study in Scarlet, the first of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. The Mormons also got a bad press in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Dynamiter. By this time, London's hopes for a Mormon version of the Taiping rebellion had cooled, and the mainline of British propaganda was simply to denigrate everything American.

But the more elite pre-1870 writers, with greater intellectual and social pretensions, often showed support for the Mormon Saints. Thomas Carlyle, one of the biggest names, was a warm admirer of Mormondom. So was his colleague, John Stuart Mill of the British East India Company. John Stuart Mill was the son of James Mill, who also claimed to be an economist. James Mill (1773-1836), a direct disciple of the satanic Jeremy Bentham, served for 18 years as the Examiner of Correspondence for the East India Company. This is another way of saying that he was one of the top bosses of British intelligence at that time. The elder Mill's job was to develop an intelligence picture based on the reports he received, and to promote policies to maximize profits and power, often with horrendous consequences for the people of India. The East India Company was much concerned with the manipulation of religious institutions, and systematically promoted the most backward and self-destructive tendencies in Hinduism and Islam, creating distortions which continue down to the present day. Others working for the British East India Company included the monetarist economist David Ricardo and the ideologue of genocide Thomas Malthus. [98]

After working for the British East India Company for 34 years, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) took over the post of Examiner of Correspondence. The younger Mill directed a vast program of British cultural warfare, with special attention for the United States, which was seen along with Russia as a threat to the British Empire. He sponsored the career of the Scottish feudalist, neo-pagan, and proto-fascist Thomas Carlyle, who in turn became the main guru for Ralph Waldo Emerson of Harvard, the luminary of the Transcendentalist school. Emerson was famous for his concept of "self-reliance," which later morphed into the "rugged individualism" of Herbert Hoover, and the "you're on your own" doctrine of the current Republican Party.

The reactionary essayist Thomas Carlyle represented a younger generation of the British intelligence establishment following in the footsteps of Jeremy Bentham and [url]Thomas Malthus[/url]. Carlyle was so reactionary that he opposed the very timid British Reform Bill of 1867. Reacting to Lincoln's victory in the US Civil War, which had captured the imagination of British workers, it finally allowed urban industrial workers the right to vote. Like Dickens, Carlyle was a great hater of the United States. Carlyle was a close friend of the charismatic Pentecostalist and mystic Edward Irving, to whom he devoted an essay of over 200 pages, which appears in his volume of Reminiscences. [99]

Carlyle was heavily involved in many important British strategic operations of the mid-19th century. One of the principal British political assets of this era was the Italian revolutionary nationalist firebrand Giuseppe Mazzini, who generally used Great Britain as his base of operations. Mazzini's assignment was to destabilize the Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires, while making sure that no powerful independent states could ever emerge from their wreckage. Carlyle worked so closely with the Italian provocateur and wrecker that his wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle, became a mistress of Mazzini. Another of Carlyle's important projects was the American transcendentalist movement, and especially its leading light, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Carlyle must count as one of the largest single influences on the Bostonian Emerson. Carlyle presented himself as an expert in German philosophy, which was considered chic by the British upper classes, who of course could read no German. Carlyle thus became the authoritative interpreter of German thought and literature (especially Goethe) in the British Isles. Carlyle is thus a leading example of epistemological warfare and subversive political operations in the Victorian era. Carlyle's draft essay on the Mormons was written in early January, 1854, but never published in his lifetime. It was discovered in the Beinecke Library at Yale and appeared in print for the first time in 1995. It is not known why it was never completed and published, but the essay still speaks for itself. (See appendix C.)

Carlyle was deeply hostile to the United States and to the system of representative government in general. As a reactionary romanticist, he wanted institutions to evolve "organically," meaning that positive change would be either impossible or excruciatingly slow. Carlyle's fascination with the dictatorial regime of Brigham Young is that it had been created in the midst of the hyper-democratic American society of the Jacksonian era, where free speech and other political freedoms were available to many. Democracy had brought forth tyranny. Mormonism he considered better than other religions because it was openly dictatorial and theocratic, and did not pretend to be a democracy:

Mormonism is a gross physical form of Calvinism; Gross, physical and in many ways very base; but in this one incommensurably (transcendently) superior to all other forms of religion now extant. That it is believed, that it is practically acted upon from day to day and from hour to hour; taken as a very fact, the neglect or contradiction of which will vitiate and ruin all other facts of the day and of the hour. That is its immeasurable superiority; in virtue of that it has still a root in this feracious [fruitful] Earth, and prospers as we see. [100]


Carlyle harped on the notion that democratic institutions were necessarily slow and inefficient, and not adept at getting things done. He would have applauded Mussolini crushing unions and stripping Italians of their political rights, while famously making the trains run on time. He would have endorsed Mayor Giuliani of New York when he decided to conceal the problems of homelessness and poverty by ordering the police to drive panhandlers off the streets. Carlyle hated the notion of a democratic republic because it was not sufficiently aristocratic, although he had to camouflage his aristocratic prejudices behind a meritocratic facade. He also tried to show that democratic elections generally failed to select the most capable leaders for purposes of governing:

Mormonism illustrates: 1° The value of sincerity towards one's convictions (as above); 2° it offers a good illustration of the mixture of Despotism and Liberty, -- indicates, in dim rude outline, what a perfect Form of Government may be which men are several universally groping after at present. Here, sure enough, is Liberty: all these people are free citizens, to begin with; members of the model republic: entitled to the ballot box, caucus, free press, open vestry, open congress, fourth estate and every form of opposition, conceivable by the human mind. -- nothing to limit whatever mutiny may be in them except the universal parish-constable, speaking symbolically. 'Hands not in each other's pockets; hands off each other's skins!' To this degree of liberty, unsurpassable even by fancy they were all born; to this any time they can appeal, and practically return, with themselves and all their interests.


At the time he wrote this draft essay, he was working on his biography of King Frederick the Great of Prussia, whom he subsumed into his general theory of history based on charismatic heroes and hero worship. Carlyle was also a great admirer of the Puritan dictator Oliver Cromwell, and he must have seen the strong similarities between Cromwell and Brigham Young. Carlyle felt that British society was plagued by hypocrisy and was therefore not producing the true heroic type.

-- Just Too Weird: Bishop Romney and the Mormon Takeover of America: Polygamy, Theocracy, and Subversion, by Webster Griffin Tarpley, Ph.D.


Jeroboam rebuilt and fortified Shechem as the capital of the northern kingdom, and fearing that pilgrimages to the temple in Jerusalem prescribed by the Law might be an occasion for his people to go back to their old allegiance, he built two state temples [8] with golden calves, one in Bethel and the other in Dan.[5] Although criticised for his cultic activities in 1 Kings 12:25–33, calf worship was not new in Israelite ritual, but a reintroduction of earlier ritual. Bethel and Dan were already established cultic sites.

According to 1 Kings 13:1–6, while Jeroboam was engaged in offering incense at Bethel, a "man of God" warned him that "a son named Josiah will be born to the house of David", who would destroy the altar (referring to King Josiah of Judah who would rule approximately three hundred years later). Attempting to arrest the prophet for his bold words of defiance, Jeroboam's hand was "dried up", and the altar before which he stood was rent asunder. At the entreaty of the man of God, his hand was restored to him again, but the miracle made no abiding impression on him.[9] Jeroboam offered hospitality to the man of God but this was declined, not out of contempt but in obedience to the command of God.[10] The prophecy is fulfilled in 2 Kings 23:15–16.

This "man of God" who warned Jeroboam has been equated with a seer named Iddo.[11]

In 1 Kings 14, Jeroboam's son Abijah gets sick, and he sends his wife to the prophet Ahijah. Ahijah's message, however, is that Abijah will die, which he does.

War with Judah

Jeroboam was in "constant war with the house of Judah".[12] While the southern kingdom made no serious effort militarily to regain power over the north, there was a long-lasting boundary dispute, fighting over which lasted during the reigns of several kings on both sides before being finally settled.

Image
Gerard Hoet, Ahijah's prophecy to Jeroboam, 1728.

In the eighteenth year of Jeroboam's reign, Abijah (also known as Abijam), Rehoboam's son, became king of Judah.[13] During his short reign of three years, Abijah went to considerable lengths to bring the Kingdom of Israel back under his control. He waged a major battle against Jeroboam in the mountains of Ephraim. According to the Book of Chronicles Abijah had a force of 400,000 and Jeroboam 800,000.[14] The Biblical sources mention that Abijah addressed the armies of Israel, urging them to submit and to let the Kingdom of Israel be whole again,[15] but his plea fell on deaf ears. Abijah then rallied his own troops with a phrase which has since become famous: "God is with us as our leader". The biblical account states that his elite warriors fended off a pincer movement to rout Jeroboam's troops, killing 500,000 of them.[16]

Jeroboam was crippled by this severe defeat to Abijah and posed little threat to the Kingdom of Judah for the rest of his reign.[17] He also lost the towns of Bethel, Jeshanah, and Ephron, with their surrounding villages.[18] Bethel was an important centre for Jeroboam's Golden Calf cult (which used non-Levites as priests),[19] located on Israel's southern border, which had been allocated to the Tribe of Benjamin by Joshua, as was Ephron, which is believed to be the Ophrah that was allocated to the Tribe of Benjamin by Joshua.[20]

Jeroboam died soon after Abijam.

Commentary on sources

The account of Jeroboam's life, like that of all his successors, ends with the formula "And the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he warred, and how he reigned, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel" (1 Kings 14, 19).

"The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel", likely compiled by or derived from these kings' own scribes, is likely the source for the basic facts of Jeroboam's life and reign, though the compiler(s) of the extant Book of Kings clearly made selective use of it and added hostile commentaries. His family was eventually wiped out.

The prophecies of doom concerning the fall of both the House of Jeroboam and the northern kingdom as a whole ("For the Lord shall smite Israel..., and he shall root up Israel out of this good land, which he gave to their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond the river") might have been composed retroactively, after the events described had already come to pass (this position is a secular or non-literal approach to scripture). Alternately, the prophecy could have been a logical deduction. Judah had just been conquered and turned into a vassal of Egypt, while Israel stood between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian empires.

It is likely that the story of the golden calf in the wilderness (cf. I Kings 12:28 with Ex. 32:4) was composed as a polemic against Jeroboam’s cultic restoration by claiming that its origins were inconsistent with worship of YHWH.[21]

See also

• Jeroboam II

References

1. Edwin Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, (1st ed.; New York: Macmillan, 1951; 2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965; 3rd ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan/Kregel, 1983). ISBN 0-8254-3825-X, ISBN 9780825438257
2. "Study dictionary: Jeroboam". NeXtBible Learning Environment. Archived from the original on 2007-03-15. Source of transliterations and explanation of significance.
3. An alternate interpretation of the English text, claims Zeruah was the grandmother of Jeroboam, being the mother of Nebat. But this is not supported by the Hebrew source. Additionally throughout the Books of Kings, it is standard practice to also list the names of kings' mothers, on the occasion of the beginning of their reign.
4. 1 Kings 14:1
5. Driscoll, James F. "Jeroboam". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 6 Jan. 2014
6. Encyclopaedia Judaica | second edition | vol 11 | pg 142 | authors Bustanay Oded / S. David Sperling (2nd ed.)
7. Encyclopaedia Judaica | second edition | vol 11 | pg 142 | authors Bustanay Oded / S. David Sperling (2nd ed.
8. Collins, John J., A short introduction to the Hebrew Bible, Fortress Press (2007), p. 47
9. 1 Kings 13:33
10. Gill, J., Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible on 1 Kings 13, accessed 19 October 2017
11. "IDDO - JewishEncyclopedia.com". http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com.
12. Smith's Bible Dictionary: Jeroboam, accessed 2 August 2017
13. 2 Chronicles 13:1
14. 2 Chronicles 13:3
15. 2 Chronicles 13:4–12
16. 2 Chronicles 13:17
17. 2 Chronicles 13:20
18. 2 Chronicles 13:19
19. 1 Kings 12:25–33
20. Joshua 18:20–28, esp. 23
21. Encyclopaedia Judaica | second edition | vol 11 | authors Bustanay Oded / S. David Sperling (2nd ed.) | pg 142

External links

• Jeroboam at the Jewish Encyclopedia

Re: Mormonism in The New Germany, by Dale Clark

PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2018 11:02 pm
by admin
The Order of Enoch: Remarks by President Brigham Young
delivered in the Bowery, Logan City, Sunday Morning, June 29, 1873.
Reported by David W. Evans.

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In the early days of the church, the duty was strongly enjoined of consecrating all the possessions to the Lord; and this was not to be a figurative, but a real consecration; in which all the possessions were to be catalogued and consecrated in legal form, and the transaction authenticated by witnesses. The custodian of this property was to be a "Trustee in Trust," the community into which the faithful Saint thus entered was to be called "The United Order of Enoch," and the property was to be held for the benefit of this community.

The Saints did not take kindly to the Order, and it existed in theory merely. Within a year or two Brigham has been making the most arduous efforts to bring his followers into this community, meeting, however, with very little better success than its founders. When he first proposed its re-establishment, it was decidedly opposed in the Tabernacle, by the apostles Orson Pratt, John Taylor, and George Q. Cannon, and a regular quarrel took place; the Prophet and his dissenting followers parting, each with a firm determination not to yield to the other side. The next week the four went north on a preaching tour, and labored harmoniously together in the attempt to build up the Order.

Whoever joins this community gives all his earthly possessions into the keeping of Brigham Young. His children, too, are required to sign away all claim or title to the property; if any are too young to write, the pen is given them, and their hands guided by their elders, and they are thus deprived of their rightful patrimony; and in return for all this, the family is to be furnished with what food and clothing the officers think they require.

As Brigham and his co-workers journeyed northward, he telegraphed to the bishops of the various settlements through which he would pass, informing them what time he would visit them, and requesting them to call special meetings of the residents of their wards before his arrival, and read to them the following telegram: "I am coming north, organizing branches of the Order of Enoch; how many of you are willing to join the Order without knowing anything about it?"

In the little town of Fillmore seventy-five men responded to the call for a meeting, and, strange as it may seem, fifty of those men voted to join the "Order." They fully understood that all on becoming members were required to deed their property to the "Trustee in Trust," otherwise, "Brigham Young, his heirs, executors, and assigns," yet they decided, with full knowledge of this, to make a blind investment of all their "worldly gear," and upon the arrival of the religious Autocrat, one half of the remaining twenty-five accepted the situation, and signed their names to an agreement binding themselves to obey "Enoch's" requirements. The following were the unanswerable arguments which Brigham used to secure their conversion: "I want you to understand that the car (meaning Enoch) is rolling on. The set time of the Lord has come, and no man can stay its progress. If you do not want to be run over, jump on, or get out of the way. I do not want a part of your property, I want it all. If there are any of you who cannot abide the requirements of the Lord, I do not want you to come near me, or to speak to me. I feel as far above you as the heavens are above the earth."

Those who became members of this branch of Enoch worked well, determined to make it a success. All labored together for the interest of the Order, and were credited a certain sum, I think fifteen cents an hour. They were economical, hoping to make the books show a balance in their favor, after deducting expenses of sustaining their families. But there were so many sinecures, and so much mismanagement, that after the lapse of one single summer an investigation of affairs became necessary, and the fact became known that their divinely directed labors had not paid the running expenses of the institution. Many who had expected that the records would exhibit a balance in their favor, awoke to the disagreeable fact that they, as co-partners in the United Order, the grand scheme that was to reconcile "the irrepressible conflict between capital and labor," must discount the sum stipulated as payment for their services. And they are at present in debt for the commonest necessaries of life consumed during their short-lived experiment.

A similar condition of affairs exists wherever this gigantic swindle has been in operation. And while Brigham has been gloating over his ill-gotten gains, he has bound these poor victims more firmly to himself by the terrible bondage of debt. The wildest dissatisfaction exists, and in nearly every county the Order may be regarded as dead, and beyond even the power of Brigham Young to restore.

The Tithing System is a direct outgrowth of "Enoch." When Joseph saw that the people did not take kindly to his community plan, he found it necessary to adopt some other means of raising a permanent fund for the church, and Orson Pratt proposed that every member should every year be obliged to pay one tenth of his income, out of which the church should be supported. This plan met with the approval of the officers, and it has been continued ever since. Every town has its tithing-house, which is in charge of the local bishop. He takes charge of all the goods that are brought in, usually paying himself a handsome commission, and sees, when any quantity has been gathered, that it is transported to the large tithing-house in Salt Lake City.

This tithing-house is under the direct control of Brigham Young, and he, his counsellors and clerks, have the first choice of all the goods that are brought in; the remaining stores are dealt out as payment to the poor men who are employed by Brigham as laborers. I have seen the tithing-store beseiged by a crowd of tired, care-worn women, wives of these men, waiting for their turn to be served. Sometimes a poor woman will stand all day waiting for a sack of flour, a basket of potatoes, or a quart of molasses. Let the day be ever so cold or stormy, there she must wait, until the clerks see fit to attend to her wants.

Everything is received here in payment for tithing: hay, grain, vegetables, butter, cheese, wool, or any other product. If a man has not money, he must give one tenth of what he has. It matters little whether he can afford it; the church demands it, and "the church" gets it.

-- Wife No. 19, the Story of a Life in Bondage, Being a Complete Expose of Mormonism and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy, by Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young's Apostate Wife


Moreover, at the beginning, the Mormon Church was a thoroughly collectivist and communal economic system ("the Order of Enoch"), a form of primitive communism. The right-wing, market-fetishist, Mormon apostles of today are thoroughly embarrassed by any reference to the communistic phase of their faith....

The Prophet Joseph Smith was born in eastern Vermont, in the valley of the White River. During the I790s there appeared in this state, not far from the Massachusetts border, a utopian and collectivist community of about 40 persons known as the Dorrilites, named after their founder, who, appropriately enough, was a retired redcoat officer from the British Army. Was this Dorril a stay-behind operation of the British Empire? The importance of the Dorrilites is that they offer a substantial repertoire of those organizational and doctrinal features which will later characterize Mormonism. Like the Mormons, the Dorrilites had communist property relations, but no political democracy, since the Britisher Dorril demanded total submission to his divinely inspired commands. He imposed a rigorous regime of vegetarianism, banning even leather shoes. The Dorrilites were accused by local ministers not just of doctrinal deviations, but also of holding bacchanalian orgies....

In the midst of these events, and under the influence of the nullification crisis between President Jackson and the state of South Carolina, Joseph Smith issued his infamous Civil War Prophecy on December 25, 1832. A civil war, starting with the rebellion in South Carolina, was imminent, he intoned, and the secessionists would soon seek the help of Great Britain.

By now he was calling himself "Joseph Smith The Prophet." In Kirtland, the Saints began practicing primitive communism, according to that passage of the Acts of the Apostles which specifies that the early Christians "had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men as every man had need." The vehicle for this collectivism was called the United Order of Enoch, with center of gravity in Kirtland....

Joseph Smith was guilty of financial corruption, because he allowed his revelations on the conduct of the Church to be colored by his own economic needs. After ousting an opposition faction, he attempted to revivify the United Order of Enoch, his primitive communist administration. On July 8, 1838 in Far West, Smith announced a new revelation urging the Saints to transfer the title of all of their property to the Mormon Church. In return, each man would receive a tract of land for his "everlasting inheritance," with the number of acres increasing with the size of his family. (Brodie, p. 220)

Since many had already been skinned in Kirtland, Joseph asked the Saints to lease their property to the Mormon Church "without consideration or interest" for terms varying between 10 and 99 years. What he had in mind was a kind of theocratic corporate state: "The whole church was then to be divided into four huge 'corporations' -- farmers, mechanics, shopkeepers, and laborers -- which would utilize the land, machinery, and skills of the church members for the common good." (Brodie, p. 221)

In another measure which modern reactionaries would immediately brand as communist, the Mormon corporations would offer jobs and wages of one dollar per day. Any profit realized by the corporation would then be distributed "according to the needs and wants (not according to the property invested) of each family, annually or oftener if needed .... " (Brodie, p. 221) The farming corporation was developed more than the others. This was a combine of cooperatives doing business as the "Big Field United Firms." Each of the cooperatives was responsible for the "communal farming" of about 7,000 acres of farmland. Mormon overseers assigned tasks and allotted horses and machinery. (Brodie, pp. 221-22)...

Bennett compared the Saints to the Anabaptists in Germany during the Peasant War of the 1520s. Under the prophet Thomas Muntzer, the Anabaptists tried to destroy all earthly authority and create the kingdom of God on earth. Like the Mormons, they practiced primitive communism. Bennett wrote that the Anabaptists "appeared in the year 1525, in Germany, during the religious excitement and confusion produced by the attempts of Luther and his coadjutors to reform the papacy. They so remarkably resemble the Mormons, that it is quite evident the latter have taken them for models, and have copied their doings with as much accuracy as the spirit of the age would permit. The first leader of the Anabaptists was a low, ignorant fellow, named Thomas Muntzer, who, like Joe Smith, was at the same time their Prophet and military commander. They, precisely again like the Mormons, gave themselves out for 'Latter-day Saints,' and profess to be chosen by the Almighty as instruments to produce the promised millennium reign of Christ on earth. They believed, likewise, that they were especial favorites of heaven in every respect, and that they were, when they wished it, favored with familiar personal intercourse with the deity, and from him constantly received revelations and instructions." (Bennett, p. 304)...

Brigham Young also mobilized what amounted to a collectivist war economy in Deseret. Modern Mormons claim to be the true apostles of the free market, but Brigham Young -- alone in North America at the time -- relied on a command economy using centralized planning and coercion. All important economic decisions involving the application of resources were the prerogative of the Mormon Moses. He claimed in 1867 that he had been called by God "to dictate affairs in the building up of his Zion," and that this gave him the totalitarian power to determine everything, "even to the ribbons the women wear." [144] One is reminded of the Soviet planners who wanted to control economic activity "down to the last bolt."

The Mormon statist war economy was fed by tithing. It was also fed by usury, with a rate of 12% interest per year being charged on the money the church had advanced to overseas converts making the journey to Deseret. For this reason, historians have seen many in the Mormon rank-and-file as having "the status of indentured servants." (The Mormon Rebellion, Bigler & Bagley, p. 80)

-- Just Too Weird: Bishop Romney and the Mormon Takeover of America: Polygamy, Theocracy, and Subversion, by Webster Griffin Tarpley, Ph.D.


One of the most tragic episodes in the entire history of the Christian Church was the attempt of certain radicals to set up an Anabaptist kingdom at Munster in Westphalia, Germany.

Melchior Hofmann, a radical on prophecy, predicted that Christ would return to earth in 1533. Hofmann was bitterly opposed by the Reformers and the Swiss Anabaptists, but multitudes in the Netherlands followed his teaching, including Jan Matthys. Hofmann was imprisoned in Strassburg, and eventually died there.

Matthys declared that he was the prophet Enoch, whom Hofmann had said would appear just before the return of Christ. In 1533 the followers of Matthys made themselves masters of Munster, and Matthys soon took charge. He proclaimed that Munster was going to be the New Jerusalem with community of goods and without law.

These Anabaptists preached a wild millennialism, and insisted that God's day of wrath was about to break in which the saints would dominate the governments of the world.

-- The Anabaptists: Reformation Men and Theology, by Dr. Jack L. Arnold


I say to the Latter-day Saints, that the only reason why we do not take up the subject and enter into the organization of Enoch, or a city of Enoch, is simply because we have not yet been able to find every item of law bearing upon this matter, so as to organize in a way that apostates cannot trouble us. This is the only reason. It is a matter that I am paying particular attention to, with some of my brethren, to see if we have skill enough to get up an organization and draw up papers to bind ourselves together under the laws of the United States, so that we can put our means and labor together and join as one family. As soon as we can accomplish this, and get an instrument that lawyers cannot pick to pieces and destroy, and apostates cannot afflict us, we expect to get up this institution, and enter most firmly into it.

Yesterday and the day before I had considerable to say to the Latter-day Saints, reading the dark side of the page. I will say here, I am not discouraged with regard to this latter-day work, I am not discouraged with regard to the Latter-day Saints. If we were to pick and choose today, we should find a large majority of the people called Latter-day Saints, who are ready and willing, with open hands and pure hearts, to enter into the Order of Enoch, and to live and die in this Order. This is my faith concerning the people at large, consequently I am not discouraged. But there are some who need chastening. We cannot call names, this will not answer. We cannot tell a man that he is going to apostatize, but we can chasten him as a member of the Church, not as an individual. In this capacity, while in public, we do not take the liberty of chastening an individual. But we can say to the brethren and sisters, we are encouraged. “Mormonism” is onward and upward, the Gospel that the Lord Jesus has introduced in the latter days is enjoyed by many, and it is our life, our joy, our peace, our glory, our happiness, our all; and when we come to the trying scene, as some call it, of sacrificing our property, and putting it together for the good of the community, I do not expect the brethren will receive any more trials than they have heretofore, I do know whether the sisters will.

Brother George Q. Cannon says the sisters have borne a great deal. So they have, but if they could only stand in the shoes of their husbands who are good, true and faithful, they would know that they are by no means free from perplexities. Just fancy a man with two, three, or half a dozen of his beloved wives catching him on one side, and before he can take three steps more, catching him on the other, and “I want this,” “I want that,” and “this is not right,” and “that is not right,” and so on; their minds just pulled to pieces. I say if the hair is spared on their heads they may consider that they have got blessed good wives. I have as many wives as many other men, and I keep my hair yet. But as to trials, why bless your hearts, the man or woman who enjoys the spirit of our religion has no trials; but the man or woman who tries to live according to the Gospel of the Son of God, and at the same time clings to the spirit of the world, has trials and sorrows acute and keen, and that, too, continually.

This is the deciding point, the dividing line. They who love and serve God with all their hearts rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks; but they who try to serve God and still cling to the spirit of the world, have got on two yokes—the yoke of Jesus and the yoke of the devil, and they will have plenty to do. They will have a warfare inside and outside, and the labor will be very galling, for they are directly in opposition one to the other. Cast off the yoke of the enemy, and put on the yoke of Christ, and you will say that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. This I know by experience.

God bless you.

******************************************

The Order of Enoch—Study of Law—How to Become Rich: Remarks by President Brigham Young
delivered at the General Conference, in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Monday Morning, April 7, 1873.
Reported by David W. Evans.

There are a few minutes to spare, and I wish to lay some matters before you. I will say, first, that the Lord Almighty has not the least objection in the world to our entering into the Order of Enoch. I will stand between the people and all harm in this. He has not the least objection to any man, every man, all mankind on the face of the earth turning from evil and loving and serving him with all their hearts. With regard to all those orders that the Lord has revealed, it depends upon the will and doings of the people, and we are at liberty, from this Conference, to go and build up a settlement, or we can join ourselves together in this city, do it legally—according to the laws of the land—and enter into covenant with each other by a firm agreement that we will live as a family, that we will put our property into the hands of a committee of trustees, who shall dictate the affairs of this society. If any man can bring up anything to prove to the contrary I am willing to hear it. But no man can do it.

Brother Pratt has told you, in his explanations this morning, what the Lord has revealed and how he has been merciful to the people; and when we have not been willing to be Latter-day Saints altogether, but only in part, he has said, “Well, you are the best there is, and I will accept of you. I cannot get anybody else who is willing to be part Saints, and I will lead you, my people, as long as you will let me, and I will forgive you your sins this time, and I will accept part of your property if you will not give it all,” etc., all showing the kindness and forbearance of our Father in heaven; but he has not the least objection in the world to our being perfect Saints.

I have a few things to lay before the Conference, one of which is—and I think my brethren will agree with me that this is wise and practicable—for from one to five thousand of our young and middle-aged men to turn their attention to the study of law. I would not speak lightly in the least of law, we are sustained by it; but what is called the practice of law is not always the administration of justice, and would not be so considered in many courts. How many lawyers are there who spend their time from morning till night in thinking and planning how they can get up a lawsuit against this or that man, and get his property into their possession? Men of this class are land sharks, and they are no better than highway robbers, for their practice is to deceive and take advantage of all they can. I do not say that this is the law, but this is the practice of some of its professors. The effort of such lawyers, if they are paid well, is to clear and turn loose on society the thief, perjurer and murderer. They say to the dishonest and those who are disposed to do evil, “Go and lay claim to your neighbor's property, or to that which is not your own, or commit some other act of injustice, and pay us, and we will clear you and make your claim appear just in the eye of the law;” and officers and judges too often join in the unrighteous crusades for the lawyers to wrong the just. I have been in courts and have heard lawyers quote laws that had been repealed for years, and the judge was so ignorant that he did not know it, and the lawyer would make him give a decision according to laws which no longer existed. Now, I request our brethren to go and study law, so that when they meet any of this kind of lawyers they will be able to thwart their vile plans. I do not by any means say these things of all lawyers for we have good and just men who are lawyers, and we would like to have a great many more. You go to one of the pettifogging class of lawyers, and get him to write a deed for you, and he will do it so that it can be picked to pieces by other lawyers. Employ such a man to write a deed, bond, mortgage or any instrument of writing, and his study will be to do it so that it will confound itself. This is the way that such men make business for their class. We want from one to five thousand of our brethren to go and study law.

Surveyor General Burr wrote urgently to Washington: "The fact is, these people repudiate the authority of the United States in this country, and are in open rebellion against the general government." [156] More reports came to the White House from Federal Judge Drummond about Mormon destruction of judicial records, American citizens imprisoned without due process of law, Brigham Young's suborning of juries, the Gunnison murder on orders from the Mormon Saints, and the assassination of Federal District Judge Shaver through poisoning....

One loyal, effective, and energetic federal official was John Cradlebaugh, who became the federal judge of the second District of Utah Territory. Cradlebaugh set out to punish the perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, along with the killings of former Mormons seeking to leave the territory, as well as travelers crossing through Utah. His work was sabotaged at every turn by Mormon juries acting to sabotage the law under orders from their tyrant ruler. In response to one such incident on April 12, 1859, Cradlebaugh confronted the Mormons with their moral depravity:

"'You are the tools, the dupes, the instruments of a tyrannical Church despotism. The heads of your Church order and direct you. You are taught to obey their orders and commit these horrid murders. Deprived of your liberty, you have lost your manhood, and become the willing instruments of bad men. I say to you it will be my earnest effort while with you, to knock off your ecclesiastical shackles and set you free." [199]


Judge Cradlebaugh was reprimanded by Washington doughfaces for his efforts to bring justice to Utah. Cradlebaugh was an American hero who went on to Congress and later fought with distinction during the Civil War. But, as long as the Mormons controlled the probate courts, and the probate courts had original jurisdiction in most cases, justice was doomed to miscarry....

Statehood for Deseret, commented an observer familiar with Utah, meant Young as governor, George Smith as lieutenant governor, and Wells as head of the Supreme Court. This Gentile asked: "What chance would a man like me have for justice with Mormon Danites as constables to arrest, and Mormon Elders as Magistrates to bind over; a Mormon Bishop as Circuit Judge to try, and a Mormon Supreme Court High Council to appeal to -- presided over by High Chief Justice, President, Lieut. Gen. Daniel H. Wells -- a cruel and remorseless bigot who knows as much of law outside of Mormonism as Red Cloud does of Blackstone's Commentaries?'" (Hirshson, pp. 309-310)...

According to Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker, "the United States Attorney's office indicted two of the Salt Lake committee's leaders, David Johnson and Thomas Welch, both prominent members of the Mormon Church, on bribery and other charges. It was expected that their trial might implicate other leading members of the Mormon establishment, including Michael O. Leavitt, the governor of Utah. [In August 2001] the federal judge in the case, David Sam, who was also a Mormon, threw out the key charges, calling them an 'uninvited federal intrusion' into the state's affairs." The Mormon judge Sam dismissed the entire case in November 2001. [104]

Welch and Johnson escaped conviction. What happened to them reminds us of how Brigham Young shifted exclusive responsibility for the Mountain Meadows Massacre to John D. Lee, the only person to be executed for that crime. In the 2002 Winter Olympics scandal, Mitt Romney made sure that none of the bigger Mormon fish were caught in the net. The close alliance between Mitt Romney and Mike Leavitt which we see on display today was actually forged in the midst of a cover-up of Olympic proportions which saved not only Leavitt, but unknown bigwigs of the antinomian Mormon Saints....

Arizona, another part of Brigham Young's Inland Empire, also has a large polygamist population. Here, as in Utah, polygamy is outlawed by the state constitution. In 1953, law enforcement officials launched a midnight raid on the polygamist community at Short Creek, with hundreds of children being separated from their polygamous households and dozens of men indicted for bigamy and statutory rape. [323] About 20 girls between 11 and 15 years of age had been forced into polygamous unions with older men. Some 26 men later pleaded guilty on charges of unlawful cohabitation, and were given sentences of one year's probation at Mohave County Superior Court. The 40 women and 160 children were taken into protective custody by the family court in Phoenix. Two judges agreed that the welfare of the children was in danger, so the mothers and children were sent to live with Mormon families in various parts of Arizona. But this ruling was struck down by the Arizona appeals court in 1955, and this finding was upheld by the Arizona Supreme Court. How many Mormons sat on these courts? In any case, the polygamist community of Short Creek was soon restored to its status quo. After that, the elected officials of Arizona basically stopped all enforcement of the anti-polygamy laws. [324]

-- Just Too Weird: Bishop Romney and the Mormon Takeover of America: Polygamy, Theocracy, and Subversion, by Webster Griffin Tarpley, Ph.D.


If I could get my own feelings answered I would have law in our school books, and have our youth study law at school. Then lead their minds to study the decisions and counsels of the just and the wise, and not forever be studying how to get the advantage of their neighbor. This is wisdom.

My mind is so led upon the subject brother Pratt has been speaking upon with regard to the orders that God has revealed that I can hardly let it alone when I am talking to the people. He said there are many rich men who are willing to do anything that the Lord requires of them. I believe this, and there is quite a number of poor men, likewise, who would like to do anything if they could only know that it was the will of the Lord. I am about to make an application of my remarks with regard to the willingness of men. But in this I shall except brother Pratt, for the simple reason that I do not know a man who is more willing to do what he is told than he is. If he is told to teach mathematics, he is willing to do it; if he is told to make books, preach the Gospel, work in a garden or tend cattle, he is willing to do it, and I know of no man more willing to do anything and everything required of him than he is. But I want to say to our willing, kind, good brethren that, so far as obeying the orders which God has revealed, I can bring the rich into line quicker than I can get many poor men who are not worth a dollar, and who do not know how to raise a breakfast tomorrow morning. I have tried both, and know. Who is there among us who came here rich? It was alluded to by brother Pratt. Look over our rich men, where are they? Who is there among the Latter-day Saints that is wealthy? When I came to this valley I was a thousand dollars in debt. I left everything. I think I got about three hundred dollars, a span of horses, and a little carriage, for all my property I left in Nauvoo. But I bought cattle, horses and wagons, and traded and borrowed and got the poor here by scores myself; and I have paid for these teams since I have been here.

When I got here I was in debt only about a thousand dollars for myself and family to a merchant in Winter Quarters, but I was in debt for others, and I have paid the last dime that I know anything about. When I reached here I could not pay one-tenth—I could not pay my surplus—I could not give my all—for I had nothing.

My mother and father both favored his [Brigham Young's] suit, and labored with me to induce me to view it in the same light. Brigham was our spiritual guide; it might be that in refusing him I should lose all hopes of future salvation. That was my mother's plea. My father's was that Brigham was able to hurt him pecuniarily. And then came my oldest brother, who added his influence in Brigham's favor by telling me that Brigham had it in his power to ruin him, and was very angry with him, and had threatened to "cut him off from the church," which was, to a person in his position, the very worst thing that could happen.

The trouble between them was of Brigham's own making, and I will give it, as briefly as I can, to show how Brigham managed to get everything out of his people without paying for it, and, at the same time, show the amount of honor which he has in business matters.

In 1860 the first telegraph line was extended from the Atlantic States to the Pacific, passing through Salt Lake City. Feramorz Little, a nephew of the President, took a contract to furnish about one hundred and fifty miles of poles, at three dollars each. According to Brigham's statement, Little was unable to fill the contract until the Prophet came to the rescue, and secured three dollars and a quarter each, by furnishing one hundred miles of sawed poles, although, in truth, the sawed timber was not so good as common round poles.

Six years later, a rival company commenced putting up a new line. Brigham negotiated for a contract, and succeeded in securing nearly eight hundred miles, -- extending from Denver City westward, -- at the very gratifying price of eight dollars a pole. It is very generally believed that Brigham and one of the new company had a previous understanding to divide the profits on this magnificent job.

He then sub-let the whole contract to Bishop John Sharp and Joseph A. Young,-- his eldest son, who has recently died, -- at three dollars a pole; and my brother Gilbert took about four hundred and fifty miles -- from Green River to Denver at the very reasonable price of two dollars and a half a pole. He was then the owner of ten freight wagons, with six mules to each wagon; but, in order to fill his contract, he found himself compelled to purchase six additional teams, at a cost of seven thousand dollars, which, with tools, provisions, and general outfit, increased the sum to nearly eleven thousand dollars, which he was obliged to borrow, paying a very heavy interest five per cent, a month; but that, of course, was his own fault, not the Prophet's.

Brigham was anxious to have the work done immediately, -- which is not at all strange when one remembers that he would make five dollars on each pole, -- and he had sent for my brother, and urged him to take the job, telling him that he knew of no one so suitable, for Gilbert had such a fine business reputation; adding that he was certain that the blessing of God would rest upon him, for it was His will that all the Saints should accumulate riches. After all this, and very much more talk of the same kind, Gilbert was induced to take the contract, my father giving security for the borrowed money.

My brother left Salt Lake City with his outfit as early as the snow would permit him to cross the mountains. When he had got his wagons loaded with poles for the first time, Brigham telegraphed for him to stop work and return to the city. He immediately complied with the order, and found, on his arrival, that there was a prospect of the new company compromising with the old, and putting up no line. They now desired to buy off all contracts. Brigham would clear on the contract one hundred thousand dollars, if the line was put up, and of course could compromise for no less. Sharp and Joseph A. wanted forty thousand dollars, and my brother ten thousand, if they gave up the contract. Brigham said that, in justice, Gilbert ought to have twenty thousand dollars, to pay the expenses of the delay, &c.

Of course it was cheaper to put up the line than to compromise at this cost, and he returned to his work, having lost twelve days. His expenses at this time were about one hundred dollars a day. He had thirty men employed, at sixty dollars a month and their board, and he also had grain to furnish for one hundred mules. Brigham promised to pay for all this delay, but as usual he failed to do so.

My brother than began to furnish the poles, and succeeded in delivering about twenty-five miles a week. For two months he received his pay quite regularly, and everything went on swimmingly. When he was about one hundred miles from Denver, having completed about three hundred and fifty miles, he was sent for to give up his contract on the eastern line, and take a contract on the northern line instead. That was between Utah and Montana. Gilbert was much averse to the change, as he had finished the most difficult portion of his work, and passed through where the timber is the least accessible. But Brigham insisted, and wrote, promising to make it all right with him if he would come back, and go up north, and furnish one hundred miles or more of poles. Finally he sent Joseph A. down to my brother, who succeeded in persuading him to return.

While on his way back, he met Mr. E. Creighton, the superintendent of the line, with a company of men, setting the poles which he had furnished. Being desirous of giving thorough satisfaction, he sent Mr. Lorenzo Ensign, with three teams, loaded with good poles, to exchange for any poor timber which did not satisfy. Those teams continued with the pole-setters until Mr. Creighton sent them back, remarking that he did not find it necessary to change one pole a day, and that he was entirely satisfied with the timber. I mention this because Brigham afterwards said that the contract was not well filled, and made this an excuse for not paying my brother. Those three teams remained with the pole-setters about four weeks, and, as I before said, were dismissed by one of the owners of the line.

Gilbert returned home in August, and, on starting for the north, Joseph A. asked him to set the poles that he should furnish on the Montana line, at the same time agreeing to pay him a dollar apiece for setting, and three dollars for the poles. That was fifty cents more than he received on the eastern line, but it would scarcely pay him for a move of six hundred miles, to a country where timber was in very high mountains and rough canons.

Removing from the east of course broke the original contract; but as Gilbert had all the confidence in the world in the word of Brigham and of Joseph A., he neglected to make a new written agreement. After he had furnished the poles for about one hundred miles, my younger brother -- who was farming at the time -- took his team, and, after hiring six men, went to set the poles, paying his men two dollars a day and their board. They worked four weeks, for which they never received one dollar.

When my youngest brother was about leaving for home, Gilbert gave him an order on Sharp and Young for one thousand dollars. While Gilbert was in the East he had sent orders for money every month for my youngest brother to collect and disburse. Those orders were promptly paid, and he had no thought that this one would not be paid as promptly. He called at Brigham's office, and presented the order, and was curtly informed by Brigham that he must "hunt up Sharp and Joseph A."

On inquiring for their office, it could not be found. The day following he chanced to meet Bishop Sharp, who referred him to Joseph A. He called at the latter's residence three times without seeing him; finally, four days after, my brother succeeded in meeting him in his father's office. He was told to sit down in the outer room, where he was left alone for two hours; then he was called into the private office, and told that there was no money for him.

"But," said he to Brigham and Joseph A., "I must have the money; I have ten men who have already been waiting five days for their pay, and I am still paying them, or am under obligation to do so, and their board in the city also; and none of this can be done without money."

After a little more consultation Brigham said, "We can give you a draft on New York, which you can cash with some of the bankers or merchants in the city.

My brother then asked for time to inquire on what terms he could cash the draft; but was told that merchants would often pay a percentage on such paper, and that it was always as good as money. He then asked, if he was obliged to have it discounted, if Sharp and Young would lose the amount, but was told that he need not be so particular, for he must take the draft or nothing, since they had no money. He took it then, as he saw very plainly that they did not intend to give him anything else, and presented it to every banker and merchant in Salt Lake City, but could find no one who would take it. On a second call at Walker Brothers', he succeeded in cashing it at three per cent discount. Meeting Joseph A. afterwards, he told him he should charge him with the thirty dollars. Joe replied, "All right;" yet neither he nor Gilbert ever received another dollar from them, though they were in the boys' debt two thousand dollars.

When Gilbert returned from the North he found it difficult to pay his men, and also to meet his other expenses. He spent the winter trying to get his pay, during which my younger brother, Edward, took the teams and went to California for freight, hoping by that means to save Gilbert from bankruptcy. The trip not proving successful, the spring of '67 opened very dark for us financially. Gilbert saw no way but to sell his teams. I remember his coming home one night, feeling extremely dejected, and telling us he had sold sixteen of his best mules for less than half the amount he had paid for them, and expected the remainder to go at a still lower price.

In the spring of 1868 he was forced into bankruptcy by Captain Hooper, one of his principal creditors. This same Captain William H. Hooper had the good fortune to be one of the Prophet's favorites, although he was by no means a Mormon at heart, and Brigham knew it; still, as he liked him, and as Hooper made sufficient pretence to pass for one, it was all right.

When Gilbert delivered up his papers to the assignees, they readily discovered a large indebtedness on the part of Sharp and Young. At a meeting of the creditors, Brigham, who took the responsibility of the whole affair, undertook to have everything his own way, and, as my younger brother remarked, "literally rode over the whole company rough-shod." Among other statements, he said, --

"Gilbert Webb's poles were many of them condemned," which was utterly false. He then said he had never written to Gilbert while he was East. In face of this the letter was produced and read before the company. He then said he was sure he had no recollection of it, and asked George Q. Cannon -- who was his clerk at that time -- if he remembered it. Cannon replied that he believed he did. Previous to this, when Gilbert saw that he must lose everything, he considered it his duty to pay off his men, also to pay the notes which my father had signed, and to save him from utter ruin. At this Brigham's rage knew no bounds; he wanted Hooper to have his pay first. One of Gilbert's creditors was a Mr. Kerr, a Gentile banker, whom he paid without consulting the Prophet, which greatly enraged him. In speaking of it to my mother, he manifested all the growling propensities of an old "cur;" saying that Gilbert had paid all the notes due to Gentiles, and left his friend Hooper to take his chance with the rest of the creditors, and he intended to disfellowship him for it.

This was when he was counselling my parents to use their influence with me in his behalf.

"If you do that, Brother Young," said my mother, "I shall find it very hard to forgive you; although Gilbert may have erred in judgment, he designed to do right. Would you, President Young, like to have his father ruined in the crash? The notes held by Mr. Kerr were signed by him." He said, "If his father signed the notes, he ought to pay them."

"Well," replied my mother, with considerable spirit, "if Gilbert had been paid for his work, he would have been able to have paid all his debts."

He was very angry at this, and said, "What do you know about business, I'd like to know?"

"I know enough to know when my children are ill-used and cheated, Brigham Young," said she, quickly. "I wonder how you would like to have one of your sons cut off from the church, and treated in the manner in which you have treated Gilbert."

"I should think it perfectly right if one of my boys had done wrong and needed punishment." Yet it is well known that there are no more unprincipled men in the Territory than his eldest sons; but there never have been the slightest signs of their being disfellowshipped.

After a still more spirited contest with my mother, the Prophet took his departure in a great rage, saying he should see if "Gilbert would pay his Gentile debts in preference to paying the brethren."

All this was for the purpose of influencing me, and I saw that I must yield. There was nothing but ruin in store for us if I persisted in my refusal. The loss of property was by no means so dreadful a thing to my brother—brought up to believe that there was no salvation outside of Mormonism -- as being cut off from the church and receiving the Prophet's curse, and he was heart-broken at the prospect.

I made up my mind to make one last appeal myself to Brigham Young, and see if I could not touch his heart and induce him to resign his claims to me, and not to punish my family because I could not bring myself to become his wife. I was sure that I could move him. I would make myself so humble, so pathetic, before him. I would do all I could to serve him. I would never forget his kindness to me; but I could not marry him without bringing great unhappiness upon myself. I should also fail to bring happiness or comfort to him. I would be so eloquent that he could not refuse to listen to me.

I went up to the city to visit a friend, quite determined to make this appeal to him, but my courage failed me. Two or three times I started to call to see him, but I would only get in sight of his office, and turn back faint and trembling. One day I saw him coming towards me in the street, and I determined to screw up my courage and speak to him. But when I reached him my tongue refused to speak the words, and I only faltered out a common-place greeting. All my eloquence was frozen under the chilling glance of the steely-blue eyes, which had not a ray of sympathetic warmth in them. No one who has ever been under his peculiar influence but will understand me when I say that in his presence I was powerless. My will refused to act, and I went away from him, knowing that I never could say to him what I felt.

I returned home, feeling, more than ever, that my doom was fixed. My religion, my parents —everything was urging me on to my unhappy fate, and I had grown so tired with struggling that I felt it was easier to succumb at once than to fight any longer. I began, too, to be superstitious about it; I did not know but that I was fighting the will of the Lord as well as the will of the Prophet, and that nothing but disaster would come as long as I was so rebellious. The thought struck me, in a sudden terror, "What if God should take my children, to punish my rebellious spirit?" It was agony. "Not my will, but thine," was my heart-broken cry, more desperate than resigned, however, and I went to my mother and told her that I had decided. I would become the wife of Brigham Young!

-- Wife No. 19, the Story of a Life in Bondage, Being a Complete Expose of Mormonism and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy, by Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young's Apostate Wife


Here is Horace S. Eldredge, he is one of our wealthy men. What did he have when he came here? Nothing that I know of, except just enough to get here with his family. William Jennings has been called a millionaire. What was he worth when be came here? He had comparatively little. Now he is one of our wealthy men. William H. Hooper is another of our wealthy men. He is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. How much had he to pay as surplus when he came here. He could pay no surplus, for he was worth nothing; but he is now wealthy. If he had gone to California I believe he would have been poor today.

There is any amount of property, and gold and silver in the earth and on the earth, and the Lord gives to this one and that one—the wicked as well as the righteous—to see what they will do with it, but it all belongs to him. He has handed over a goodly portion to this people, and, through our faith, patience and industry, we have made us good, comfortable homes here, and there are many who are tolerably well off, and if they were in many parts of the world they would be called wealthy. But it is not ours, and all we have to do is to try and find out what the Lord wants us to do with what we have in our possession, and then go and do it. If we step beyond this, or to the right or to the left, we step into an illegitimate train of business. Our legitimate business is to do what the Lord wants us to do with that which he bestows upon us, and dispose of it just as he dictates, whether it is to give all, one-tenth, or the surplus. I was present at the time the revelation came for the brethren to give their surplus property into the hands of the Bishops for the building up of Zion, but I never knew a man yet who had a dollar of surplus property. No matter how much one might have he wanted all he had for himself, for his children, his grandchildren, and so forth.

If we are disposed to enter into covenant one with another, and have an agreement made according to the laws of our land, and we are disposed to put our property into the hands of trustees, and work as we are directed—eat, drink, sleep, ride, walk, talk, study, school our children, our middle-aged and our aged, and learn the arts and sciences, the laws of the Priesthood, the laws of life, anatomy, physic and anything and everything useful upon the earth, the Lord has not the least objection in the world, and would be perfectly willing for us to do it, and I should like, right well, for us to try it. I know how to start such a society, right in this city, and how to make its members rich. I would go to now, and buy out the poorest ward in this city, and then commence with men and women who have not a dollar in the world. Bring them here from England, or any part of the earth, set them down in this ward and put them to work, and in five years we would begin to enter other wards, and we would buy this house and that house, and the next house, and we would add ward to ward until we owned the whole city, every dollar's worth of property there is in it. We could do this, and let the rich go to California to get gold, and we would buy their property.

Brigham Young wanted totalitarian control, and not the inquiring mind, and as a result he "made Utah the thinking man's graveyard." (Hirshson, p. 322) The Latter-day Saints like to compare themselves to the people of Israel, but a comparison of Mormonism and Judaism shows that while the Mormons placed a much greater emphasis on proselytizing and recruiting, they neglected education and had contempt for learned individuals. This intellectual backwardness and contempt for science still hangs like a heavy pall over the American Intermountain West.

-- Just Too Weird: Bishop Romney and the Mormon Takeover of America: Polygamy, Theocracy, and Subversion, by Webster Griffin Tarpley, Ph.D.


Although a very ignorant man himself, able neither to read nor write the English language correctly, he has always been a bitter opponent of free schools and liberal education.

"I will not give a dollar," he says, "to educate another man's child. If you school your children, there is great danger of their becoming blacklegs and horse thieves," he announced on one occasion, yet he seems quite willing that his own should take the risk. All of them have received a certain amount of education, enough to make them presentable in society, and some have had quite superior advantages. One son has just graduated at West Point, another is a student at the Michigan University Law School, and a third has just entered Cornell University.

Every attempt that has been made for the establishment of free schools he has fiercely battled against, and the other officers of the church have invariably followed his lead. He assures his people that education is the bitterest foe to labor. If they allow their children to be taught anything they will no longer be of any service to their parrents. He dilates largely upon this subject in the Tabernacle.

"I am utterly opposed to the schools," he said, in one address. "They have been introduced into the States in consequence of the tyranny of the rich over the poor. But instead of keeping the people poor, and then providing free schools for them, I would have the rich put out their money to usury by giving the poor employment, that they may be able to sustain themselves and school their own children. It is the duty of the rich to use their means, as I have done myself, in building factories, railroads, and other branches of industry, in order that the laboring people may have a chance to work together, and improve their condition; the rich taking their portion, and all growing wealthy together."

There is an unconscious sarcasm in this last sentence that is positively sublime. That one expression, "as I have done myself," is the supremest satire. I do not believe there is anywhere a man so suspicious of his workmen, so penurious in his dealings with them, so anxious to cut their wages down to the very lowest penny, as is Brigham Young. I know men who have been in his employ for years, and have never received the least remuneration. They have worked on and on, and when at last they have brought a bill against him for their labor, they have been met with one equally large on his side for house rent, or goods from the co-operative store, or are told that their labor is to go toward paying their tithing.

If all the rich men use their means, "as I have done mine," therefore there will be very little chance of the poor man being able to educate their children at all: which is exactly what Brigham Young wants. Had he spoken the truth he would have said, "I am opposed to free schools. They will rend this dark veil of superstition which envelops you, and let in the light of reason, and this will loosen my hold on you. If you educate your children you make better men and women of them, but they will not be such blind slaves to me as you have been. The day that sees knowledge generally disseminated throughout this community sees my power broken, my 'opportunities' gone, and therefore, with my consent, we will have no free schools."

Unlettered and uncultured as he is, he recognizes the power of education, and that is why he is such a bitter opponent to general culture, and why, at the same time, he takes special care that his own children shall lack no advantages.

-- Wife No. 19, the Story of a Life in Bondage, Being a Complete Expose of Mormonism and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy, by Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young's Apostate Wife


Would you like to know how to do this? I can tell you in a very few words—never want a thing you cannot get, live within your means, manufacture that which you wear, and raise that which you eat. Raise every calf and lamb; raise the chickens, and have your eggs, make your butter and cheese, and always have a little to spare. The first year we raise a crop, and we have more than we want. We buy nothing, we sell a little. The next year we raise more; we buy nothing, and we sell more. In this way we could pile up the gold and silver and in twenty years a hundred families working like this could buy out their neighbors. I see men who earn four, five, ten or fifteen dollars a day and spend every dime of it. Such men spend their means foolishly, they waste it instead of taking care of it. They do not know what to do with it, and they seem to fear that it will burn their pockets, and they get rid of it. If you get a dollar, sovereign, half-eagle or eagle, and are afraid it will burn your pockets, put it into a safe. It will not burn anything there, and you will not be forced to spend, spend, spend as you do now. See our boys here, why if my boys, by the time they are twenty, have not a horse and carriage to drive of their own, they think they are very badly used, and say, “Well, I do not think father thinks much of me.” A great many things might be said on this subject that I do not want to say.

Brethren, we want you to turn in and study the laws of the Territory of Utah, of this city and other cities, and then the statutes of the United States, and the Constitution of the United States. Then read the decisions of the Supreme Court. I do not mean the self-styled “United States Supreme Court for the Territory of Utah;” but the United States Supreme Court that sits at Washington—the seat of government. Read up their decisions, and the decisions of the English judges and the laws of England and of other countries, and learn what they know, and then if you draw up a will, deed, mortgage or contract, do not study to deceive the man who pays you for this, but make out a writing or instrument as strong and firm as the hills, that no man can tear to pieces, and do your business honestly and uprightly, in the fear of God and with the love of truth in your heart. The lawyer that will take this course will live and swim, while the poor, miserable, dishonest schemers will sink and go down. We live by law, and I only condemn those among the lawyers who are eternally seeking to take advantage of their neighbors.

Now we will close, and adjourn until 2 o'clock this afternoon.

Re: Mormonism in The New Germany, by Dale Clark

PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:29 am
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Edward Hine
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Edward Hine (10 Feb 1825–15 Oct 1891) was an influential proponent of British Israelism in the 1870s and 1880s, drawing on the earlier work of Richard Brothers (1794) and John Wilson (1840). Hine went as far as to conclude that "It is an utter impossibility for England ever to be defeated. And this is another result arising entirely from the fact of our being Israel."

Career

A bank clerk by occupation, Hine claimed that he had been inspired by a lecture given by Wilson in London, which he heard at the age of 15, but he himself did not publish on the topic for nearly thirty years, giving his first public lecture in 1869 (Barkun 1997, p. 10). For several years Hine published a weekly journal, The Nation's Leader, and a monthly magazine, Life from the Dead (from 1873 onwards). He founded "The British-Israel Identity Corporation" in 1880.

David Baron in his The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes (ch. 2) cites claims identifying Hine himself with the "Deliverer" announced in Romans 11:25:

Are the British people identical with the lost Ten Tribes of Israel? And is the nation, by the identity, being led to glory? If these things are so, then where is the Deliverer? He must have already come out of Zion. He must be doing His great work; He must be amongst us. It is our impression that, by the glory of the work of the identity, we have come to the time of Israel's national salvation by the Deliverer out of Zion, and that Edward Hine and that Deliverer are identical.


Hine in turn inspired Edward Wheeler Bird, who however came to see Hine as a rival rather than an ally. The main point of contention between Bird and Hine was that the former tended to identify all Teutonic peoples as descendants of the Israelites, while Hine reserved this status for the Anglo-Saxons (interpreting the name "Saxons" as "sons of Isaac"), preferring for Germany the role of Assyria.

As the institutions created by Bird began to obscure Hine's success in Britain, Hine turned to the United States in search of a new audience. (Barkun 1997, p. 10f.).

Influence

Hine's ideas thus influenced the nascent Anglo-Israelite movement in the United States, where they are still advocated by some Christian white supremacist fringe groups, which turned to antisemitism, Clifton A. Emahiser's "Church of True Israel" identifying the Anglo-Saxons as the true Israelites and the modern Jews with the Canaanites which must be exterminated according to Jewish law:

Maybe Great Britain is unaware that the Canaanites are the "Jews", as we have the same problem in the United States today. Yahweh commissioned Israel to completely exterminate every Canaanite on the face of the earth, thus we better know for sure who they are. (Emahiser, p. 33)


Likewise, followers of the Christian Identity movement claim that they are descendants of the Biblical Israelites, whereas the Jews are the children of Satan (Ould-Mey p. 11). This development is an inversion of the motivation of Hine, who was in fact a philo-Semite (Barkun 2003, p. xii). The Worldwide Church of God of Herbert W. Armstrong also perpetuated Hine's identification of Germany with Assyria, adding the comparison of the Nazi Holocaust with the destruction of Israel by Sargon II, into the 1980s.

Works

• England's Coming Glories (1880); 2003 reprint, ISBN 978-0-7661-2885-9.
• The British Nation identified with Lost Israel (1871)
• Seven Identifications
• Twenty-seven Identifications
• Forty-seven Identifications of The British Nation with the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel: Founded upon Five Hundred Scripture Proofs (1874)[1]
• Forty-seven Identifications (1878)[1]

Hine also published a journal in the 1870s entitled Life From the Dead: Being a National Journal Associated with Identity of the British Being Lost Israel with John Cox Gawler.

Literature

• Robert Roberts, Are Englishmen Israelites? (debate with Edward Hine, Birmingham 1919)
• Robert Roberts, Anglo-Israelism Refuted (1879) [2]
• Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. "Anglo-Israelism".
• A Darms, The Delusion of British-Israelism: A Comprehensive Treatise (1938)
• Marie King, John Wilson and Edward Hine (Destiny Magazine, January 1948) [3][4]
• Clifton A. Emahiser, reprint of Hine's IDENTITY Of The Ten Lost Tribes Of Israel With The Anglo-Celto-Saxons with commentaries, Clifton A. Emahiser's Teaching Ministries [5][6]
• Mohameden Ould-Mey, The Non-Jewish Origin of Zionism, International Journal of the Humanities (2003).
• Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (1997), ISBN 0-8078-4638-4.

References

1. Hine, Edward (1874). Forty-Seven Identifications of the British Nation with the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel: founded upon Five Hundred Scripture Proofs. London.

Re: Mormonism in The New Germany, by Dale Clark

PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:42 am
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John Wilson (historian)
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Accessed: 7/19/18

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John Wilson (born 8 June 1799, Kilmarnock district, Scotland – died 22 January 1870, Brighton, England; reported as being "in his 70th year" by The Brighton Times on 29 January 1870[1]) was one of the ideological architects of British Israelism, along with 16th-century French magistrate M. Lelayer, Dean Jakob Abbadie (1654?–1727), and Sharon Turner (1768–1847), the eminent London attorney, who was Wilson's contemporary.

Wilson commenced studying at great length in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1837. Within a year, he was giving a series of lectures, which developed an audience. In 1840, he published Our Israelitish Origin, a book of his lectures, in which he claimed that the peoples of Israel had made their way across the continent of Europe to the British Isles. He brought evidence to bear from Ptolemy and works by Diodorus, supporting the earlier history of the Israelites. He studied the works of Rawlinson, Herodotus, and Josephus, and quoted extensively from Sharon Turner.

His lectures attracted the attention of, among others, Charles Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal for Scotland and one of the first Pyramidologists.

It was in Wilson's house in St Pancras, London, that the Anglo-Israel Association was founded in 1874.

On the death of Wilson's daughter in 1904, his manuscripts passed into the possession of Rev. A. B. Grimaldi.[2]

References

1. Boase, F., Modern English biography, 6 vols, 1892-1921
2. A. B. G., 'John Wilson MSS', Notes and Queries s11-I: 24 (1910), p. 464

External links

Works by or about John Wilson in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Our Israelitish Origins by John Wilson